


Nil Desperandum

by Rurouni_Idoru



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Complaining About the Boss, Existential Crisis, Gen, Hell as a Workplace, Humor, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Rated mostly for Nil's irredeemable mouth, bad at feelings, original demon character - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-01-03 08:57:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21176777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rurouni_Idoru/pseuds/Rurouni_Idoru
Summary: Nil was a nobody. Well, actually, she did in fact literally have a body, which put her ahead of a handful of some of the other demons. But metaphorically speaking, she didn’t rate, as her name might suggest. This wasn’t necessarily a problem; she found that being habitually overlooked allowed her a measure of freedom that she kind of enjoyed. There was no scrutiny on a nobody.One of Hell's working stiffs seeks out some help from the only two creatures to have ever beaten the system. It doesn't go exactly as planned. Not that there was much of a plan.





	1. Chapter 1

Nil was a nobody. Well, actually, she did in fact literally have a body, which put her ahead of a handful of some of the other demons. But metaphorically speaking, she didn’t rate, as her name might suggest. This wasn’t necessarily a problem; she found that being habitually overlooked allowed her a measure of freedom that she kind of enjoyed. There was no scrutiny on a nobody. Very little in the way of expectations. That was why she was allowed to go on what was very likely to be a suicidal wild goose chase, because at best, it would boost her numbers, and at worst, well, who cared?

She’d circled the block about three times before she finally summoned the courage to open the door and cross the threshold to the Soho bookstore. She screwed up her face in anticipation, waiting for the soles of her feet to start burning, but nothing happened. Which, upon thinking about it, made sense, because why would a bookshop be consecrated anyway, but it still felt uncanny, knowing what she did about this particular bookshop. Tentatively, she wove her way among the shelves, eyes fixed on spines she wasn’t actually looking at. 

“Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry, miss, but we were just about to close up for the evening.” There it was. Nil staggered backwards, crashing into another bookshelf. Undeterred, she regained her footing and stood, back unnaturally straight, eyes wide, and faced the fearsome creature who’d addressed her. So this was the rebel Principality, the Angel of The Eastern Gate. Every single one of her instincts screamed _ run, you idiot, before you get smited, this is the worst idea anyone’s ever had, _ but she fought them down. Nothing was ever going to get done with that kind of mindset. Couldn’t make an omelet without… risking a smiting.

“I’m, uh,” oh no she was _ talking _ to him, _ out loud _ and everything, “I’m not… actually looking to buy anything.” She folded her hands behind her back, in the hopes that then he wouldn’t see how hard they were shaking. Could angels smell fear? They could probably smell demonic fear, at least.

“Oh,” he replied, visibly relieved. “Well, in that case, feel free to come back tomorrow and not buy anything. But I’m afraid I do have to ask you to —”

“I’m here for business, actually,” she interrupted, realizing she was shouting and could not remember how to be _ not _ shouting. “I was told — I mean, I looked into — See, okay, that _ car, _ the one that’s parked out front there?”

“It is absolutely not for sale,” came another voice from elsewhere in the shop, and this one she at least vaguely recognized. Sure enough, a man-shaped being in dark glasses snaked out from behind another shelf, a jacket slung over his shoulder. “Now, out you get.”

Nil pointed at him and shouted wordlessly, and somewhat manically, before regaining the presence of mind to add, “Crowley! You! I’m here to talk to _ you! _ ” She stepped backwards again, colliding with the bookshelf that had not vanished since the first time she backed into it. He paused in his advance, and she managed to quiet the voice in her brain screaming, _ Yeah, that’s the guy that melted Ligur and then went for a holy water bath, good job stupid, you found him, now you’re gonna die_.

“Do I know you?”

“No, no one does,” she replied, her face twisting into a nervous smile. “Name’s Nil.” Crowley looked unimpressed, which was par for the course from what she remembered, and the angel’s expression was completely inscrutable. It almost looked like mild interest, horrifyingly. Oh, she had not thought this through _ at all _. 

“Look, if you’re here from Downstairs, tell them they can go to…” Crowley paused and glanced at the angel. “Where do you tell Hell to go?” She waved her hands defensively.

“I’m not here in an official capacity, or anything,” she stammered. “I mean, it’s about business, but like, _ personal _ business. Nobody sent me. I came here of my own volition.” She fidgeted a bit, before adding, “Could you please tell your angel friend I’m not worth smiting?”

“Smiting?” the angel repeated, incredulous, as though the concept was _ distasteful _ rather than standard-issue angel stuff. “_Really_. I should hope I don’t give off that impression?”

“Yeah, he’s not really the smiting type,” Crowley said. He glanced at the angel again, and added, “Look at him.” Which was a nice try, but Nil knew better.

“That’s real cute, but I’ve heard all about the flaming sword antics, and, and, and, the spitting Hellfire at the Archangels, and all that,” she said. She fixed her gaze on Crowley in the desperate hope they might find common ground. “They sent Eric the Legion up there with the Hellfire, and you _ know _ Eric can’t keep their mouths shut for anything! I’m not gonna be fooled into thinking this angel’s not dangerous just ‘cause he looks like a coconut cream puff given humanoid form! Looks don’t mean _ shit! _”

She’d come to rely on that fact as a survival strategy. She’d even adjusted her own corporation accordingly. Demons didn’t tend toward the subtle, on Earth. Even Crowley, who she’d figured out was better at keeping his head down than most, gave off a certain vibe with his aesthetic. If someone pointed at him and said “He’s a demon, from Hell,” most humans would be skeptical, but some would definitely respond with “That tracks,” and that was what Nil was trying to avoid. If someone pointed at Nil and said, “She’s a demon, from Hell,” the response she wanted to cultivate was “Who?” because they had not noticed there was even someone there. She had taken the most unassuming form she could muster: a completely statistically average young woman, mousy brown hair, glasses, and usually a black t-shirt with something meaningless on it. Today she had gone with the phrase "meow is the time" in white lettering. Nobody ever suspected anything evil from her because that would require them to notice a “her” in the first place.

“He’s not gonna smite you, alright?” Crowley assured her, so casually it was almost convincing. “Unless maybe you change your mind and try to buy something.”

“I don’t _ smite _ for that,” the angel protested. Though he then adopted a thoughtful look that Nil didn’t like at all.

“Why are you here, then,” Crowley said, and it wasn’t so much a question as a beleaguered sigh. “And try to be quick about it, we’re already running late.” The way he said it, it was almost comforting, in a twisted way: The note of bored impatience in his voice called back to simpler times when she had conceived of Crowley as just another schmuck she occasionally saw around the office. It almost managed to banish the more recent image from her mind, of him casually menacing, flicking his holy bathwater in the direction of observers. Almost, but not quite. It was at least enough to strengthen her resolve just a little.

“Okay, here’s the thing,” she started. “And like, I’m really not supposed to be saying this to your face, but nobody Downstairs notices any-friggin’-thing I do anyway, especially the lower-downs, so, whatever.” Crowley made a beckoning, “get-on-with-it” sort of hand gesture. The angel furrowed his brow and checked his pocket watch. Because of course he had a pocket watch. She sped up. “They don’t have Clue One what to do about you or your angel friend, so you’re pretty much off the hook!” 

She paused, here, to flash what she could tell was a queasy-looking smile and give them a double thumbs-up.

“The thing is,” she continued, bringing her hands up as if to guard herself, and not sure why, “that means the rest of us have to pick up your slack. And we just… _ can’t_.” She hated how hopeless it sounded. “You were pulling _ ridiculous _ numbers. I’m gonna be real, pretty much everyone already hated you before, but now that they have to do the work you left behind? You better be _ real _ glad you’re apparently unkillable.”

“Typical,” Crowley said. “All that work, and no one appreciates it until you’re gone.”

“And the way I figure it,” Nil said, heedless of Crowley’s griping, “that means you owe me!” Which did not seem to be what either of them were expecting to hear. “I mean, me and all the other peons who have to clean up after you now, I guess, but they can go piss up a rope; I'm the only one who took the initiative to come collect.”

“Come collect how?”

“You gotta make this somehow suck less for me. I didn’t like how much it sucked before, obviously, that’s Hell, but I was _ comfortable _ with it. I accepted it. But I’ll be blessed before I quietly let some scaly bastard ruin it for me because he decided he was over it!” ‘ _ Quietly _ ’ was the key word in that sentence: Nil didn’t have a whole lot on her side here, but by Satan, she intended to be as obnoxious about it as possible for as long as she could. “You should know right up front that I really don’t have an ‘or else’ here,” she said, again ignoring her instincts shouting at her that _ she absolutely should not tell them that. _ “I mean, I tried, I really did, I wanted to walk in here guns-a-blazin’ and blackmail you right up, but I really can’t think of anything I could actually _ do _ to either one of you. The worst I could come up with was, like, ‘do what I say or I’ll key your car,’ which is pretty weaksauce.” But nonetheless, Crowley very dramatically tore his sunglasses from his face, reptilian eyes narrowed at her.

“What do you want?” he snarled. Nil yelped and surged backward into the bookshelf a third time.

“Honestly,” the angel muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes. 

“I just want a little help!” she squeaked, hands up again. “I got _ options _ for you! Eh?” She attempted another smile, but there was no way she was showing the correct amount of teeth to qualify. “I did my research! I know you’re into, like, free will and choice and all that crap!” She’d been pretty proud of herself for spotting a theme when she searched the records, but Crowley seemed less so. “Okay so, option one: you make me, like, your… apprentice? Or something? Teach me your trade secrets, basically. If I can understand what you’ve been doing, I can just… do that.” Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose like he was capable of getting a headache.

“Enh,” he said, “That sounds like a lot of work.” Nil buried the urge to roll her eyes at him under the urge to continue existing.

“Option two,” she continued, “and option two isn’t my favorite option and probably won’t be yours either: you could go make a humongous, spectacularly craven ass of yourself — like, _ really _ utilize that ‘crawl on your belly and eat dust’ shit — and see if you can’t get your job back.”

“Hard pass.”

“Yeah, I toldja, it’s the least attractive option. Frankly, it might not even work; you pissed the boss off real good. Which, honestly?” She leaned forward a little, like she was telling him a juicy secret. “Kind of dope, actually.” There was always something very satisfying in seeing a horrible boss made miserable by a coworker quitting sensationally. Even if it was lessened somewhat by the fact that this boss took his anger out on the remaining staff, often in the form of dismemberment.

“Alright, option three, and this is the big one: you tell me how you managed to make yourself untouchable by Hell.” There was no sassy repartee for this one. Crowley and the Principality shared a look that seemed very significant. Nil squared her shoulders. “I want an improvement. I’m not picky about how. If I can do what you did, and get out altogether, I will.”

“So you came in here,” Crowley said, looking at her like she had more heads than she usually bothered with, “to ask a couple of total strangers to _ make you invincible? _”

“More ‘capable of quitting’ than ‘invincible,’ but I guess they’d be pretty much functionally the same thing, yeah.” Nil shrugged. “Whatever it takes to be able to say ‘take this job and shove it.’”

“I suppose it stands to reason that job satisfaction might be low,” the angel said, infuriatingly gently, “but I’m afraid we can’t really share that information.”

“Even if we wanted to,” Crowley said, clearly deliberately undercutting the angel’s niceness, “which we _ don’t._” Nil nodded, clenching her hands in disappointment.

“It’s a big ask, I get that.” She didn’t expect option three to pan out, but it was definitely her first preference. Option one it was, she supposed, but before she could say anything about it, Crowley started moving for the door again.

“Best of luck with the job thing, be sure not to give my regards to everyone down there.” He gave her a dismissive wave before turning to the angel and nodding toward the door.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she yelled, shooting for determined, but landing firmly on hysterical. Valiantly (or stupidly, she wasn’t sure), she maneuvered herself so that her body was between them and the door. “I’m not going anywhere until you at least _ kind of _ un-screw me over!” Or, of course, until one of them liquefied her, but she wasn’t about to suggest that out loud.

“Crowley,” the angel whined, “Our _ reservations_.”

“Ngh, alright. How’s this. We’ll talk about it, but not here.” Crowley looked back and forth between Nil and the angel, like he was trying to broker some kind of peace between them. “Change of scenery? Yeah? Good, get in the car.”

“You’re not seriously suggesting we take her with us,” the angel said, and Nil kind of agreed.

“It’s up to you, angel,” Crowley said, shrugging broadly. “We could leave her alone in the bookshop to wait for us, if you like. Or we could deal with her here and miss our reservations.”

“Well, nothing to be done for it,” the angel said, as though it were his idea. “Come along, dear.” He gave Nil what any expert in human misery would recognize as a customer-service smile, and made an ‘after you’ gesture. Crowley rounded on her again with a snarl.

“And if you so much as _ dirty the upholstery— _”

“_Okaynotgonnahurtthecar! _” Nil shrieked, in a full-body flinch. She was vaguely aware of the angel softly chiding Crowley as he corralled her out of the bookshop, but mostly she was distracted by thoughts of how far out of her depth she was.

Shifty bastards were trying to get her to a second location, probably to murder her more efficiently or something, and Satan help her (unlikely), she was just going to let them. What choice did she have?

She was going to be so, _ so _ very pissed if she got killed for trying to do better at her awful job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Nil Desperandum" is apparently Latin for "never despair," which is fun, given how much desperandum-ing Nil does over the course of this story.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil third-wheels what might have otherwise been a very nice meal out, and talks demonic shop.

Nil soon reconsidered her certainty that she was being taken to some unsecured location to be summarily melted: Crowley and the angel who apparently thought everyone would just forget about the Hellfire thing spent the entire car ride bickering about Crowley’s driving. Nil didn’t see what the huge deal was, if she was honest, but then again she didn’t drive much, and it did make sense than an angel might be uptight. 

She tried to puzzle out what the dynamic here was. From office reputation and the records she’d looked up, she thought she had a pretty decent grasp on Crowley’s whole deal. But the angel was a wild card. For starters, she knew she’d heard his name at least a few times, but she certainly couldn’t remember it, which meant she couldn’t look into his background the way she’d looked into Crowley’s. Not that she expected there’d be much she’d be able to find, given that she only had access to Hell’s records, which were spotty at best about anything Upstairs did, besides screw up.

Her brain kept circling back to him pouting at Crowley about reservations. The way Crowley had immediately cowed gave her pause. Her initial thought, before entering the bookstore, was that Crowley had actually managed the impossible and tempted himself an angel, which was absurd, but no more so than any of the rest of the whole Apocalypse-aversion thing. And if anyone in Hell was crazy enough to try it, Crowley was. But in the aftermath of that bookshop situation, Nil was beginning to wonder if she had it backwards: maybe it was the angel who had Crowley under his perfectly-manicured thumb. 

Some of the more cracked-out, conspiracy-prone demons were even floating the idea that Crowley had gotten out because he’d been _purified _ by association with that angel. That he was immune to holy water because, through the dogged dedication of the Principality She’d-Forgotten-His-Name, Crowley had actually Risen, and now he was some kind of sleeper agent for Heaven or something. Nil had been quick to dismiss that theory, until Crowley hurriedly shuffled her into the backseat so as not to displease someone who looked like a fluffy sunbeam. And apparently said fluffy sunbeam felt completely entitled to offer a lot of unsolicited criticism about the driving thing. But Crowley was giving as good as he got there, and swearing a blue streak about everyone else on the road to boot, so all in all, it was pretty inconclusive and Nil had gotten exactly nowhere with this line of questioning.

The car fared better, in terms of getting somewhere. Specifically, it got to a restaurant. A very busy restaurant, actually. Nil didn’t usually deal with food much, outside of suggesting to rubes that they should definitely sink all their resources into selling some of it, usually in conjunction with the word “artisanal” where it had no business being. But she knew a busy restaurant when she saw one, not least of all because occasionally that artisanal crap had gotten wildly successful at separating further rubes from way too much of their money. And this place was mobbed. It was a good thing they had reservations, because she really couldn’t fathom wasting a miracle on something like _food,_ and the angel seemed pretty dead-set on dining here for whatever reason.

Despite the fact that Nil knew that Crowley, at least, already had a perfectly serviceably human-sounding name he could use, the name they gave to the host was, of all things, “_Fell_.” For a second, that seemed like a slam-dunk of a clue as to who was in charge. It was even a little diabolical, Nil thought, for Crowley to totally unnecessarily bait an angel like that: they were so prissy and high-strung about the line of demarcation separating them from the demons. Then that second ended, and she remembered that the name “Fell” was written all over the outside of the bookstore, which sure as hell didn't belong to Crowley. So, basically, she had nothing and knew nothing and maybe she should just play the whole thing by ear. Overthinking it wouldn’t help her come up with an exit strategy. She’d barely had an _entrance_ strategy, and she seemed to be doing okay despite that.

“We only reserved a table for two,” the angel stage-whispered to Crowley, his gaze darting to Nil. Which, of course, the host picked up on.

“Oh. Oh my.” The host suddenly looked at Nil as though he hadn’t noticed they had a third with them. Because he hadn’t, until the Angel of the Eastern Friggin’ Gate had said something. Nil wondered if this was a last-ditch effort to get rid of her without causing a fuss.

“Yeah, well, my uh,” Crowley turned to look at Nil, considering for a moment, “_niece_ came to town unexpectedly.” Nil snickered at being apparently assigned the role of Crowley’s niece. Other than the predilection for dark clothes, there was very little potential family resemblance. “Shouldn’t be a problem, yeah?” And there was reality shifting a little, so that it was, in fact, totally fine that there was a third at their table.

That was kind of a relief. Despite her best efforts, Nil had been starting to give serious thought to that sleeper-agent nonsense. But deliberately rewriting reality to avoid a minor inconvenience was acceptably petty and self-serving. Petty and self-serving were well within Nil’s wheelhouse. They certainly didn’t point to holiness. Though she was mildly troubled that the angel didn’t object, either. But then, he was apparently on the outs with Heaven, too. Maybe he was _also_ petty and self-serving. It didn’t seem all that angelic, but she reasoned that she didn’t really know where the line was, in regard to how un-angelic an angel could get away with being without Falling. She’d basically pole-vaulted over that line without looking.

During the Rebellion, Nil had been a True Believer. Lucifer had made a lot of good points, Nil had thought, and she was very active in her rebelling. She’d believed in a better system. But to her very bitter disappointment, it had never come. 

The humans had an expression, she heard, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” And that was the long and short of it, really; that was the reality that had come to pass. And that was nice for the goddamn Morningstar, once he’d gotten his throne, but the rest of them, the nobodies like Nil who had made the Rebellion possible, they were still stuck serving. Same shit, different celestial plane. After the Fall, she’d gained a new understanding about that whole “don’t worship false idols” thing: Idols were worthless, false or otherwise. If she wanted something done, she’d have to do it herself. So she’d spent centuries, millenia trying to reform the existing system from within, or to find any way out of it, but she’d consistently come up empty.

But Crowley, apparently, had better luck. And presumably, some ideas.

He had always had a reputation. Not a good one, but then nothing was good in Hell. There was no sense of camaraderie or pure admiration, it was always tainted by vicious jealousy and revulsion at least. Then, usually the envy eventually gave way to unadulterated spite, which was about where Crowley was at, on most demons' radar. But the fact did remain that if Hell were to put out a Greatest Hits compilation, Crowley would get a disproportionate number of co-credits. (Satan always got top billing, of course.) The Apple was definitely at the top of the list and how do you follow up that kind of success? But the Last Temptation of Christ, the Spanish Inquisition, the M25, and probably plenty of others charted highly, too, no matter what the other demons thought about Crowley personally.

And maybe Nil was a little old-fashioned and sentimental, because as much as she did wish she could lunge over the table and savage Crowley with her cutlery for making her already-miserable job somehow worse, she knew a part of her would want to keep his snakey eyeballs in her pocket after she forked them out of their sockets, to show off giddily like an autograph. _Check it out, you'll never guess who I gouged these from,_ she would gush to her friends, if she had any. _That's right, only the Serpent of Eden, progenitor of Original Sin! Stupid bastard took me out to eat and didn't even try to kill me with his car! What a pro!_

Ungrateful asshole probably wouldn’t recognize that for the flattery that it was, though, and she’d seen that bathtub stunt just like everyone else, and the Principality sitting next to them struggling to decide what to order was an unknown and potentially explosive element, so Nil kept her mouth shut. At least until the waiter came by to take their orders.

Nil didn’t know why she bothered with human food anymore. It was stupid to keep falling for it. Every now and then, she’d have a look at a menu and see something labeled as “sinful,” and it piqued her interest: humans had done some pretty wildly innovative things, after all. Maybe the humans had conceived of a way to make a food that tasted like the experience of, say, stealing, or baseless hatred. And besides being kind of interesting, such a thing could cut down on the amount of _actual_ sinning humans did, which could be pretty bad news for Downstairs, so she made it a priority to check it out in the hopes of getting out ahead of it.

But every time without fail, she was instead served some very chocolatey dessert. It wasn’t even ever some other kind of thing; it was always chocolate. What the hell was supposed to be sinful about that? Sure, there was gluttony to consider, but eating one dessert wasn’t _inherently_ gluttonous. And it wasn’t as if there was something special about chocolate; a human could just as easily gorge themselves stupid on, say, pig meat or plants or whatever else they ate these days.

The “sinfully decadent” lava cake the waiter placed in front of Nil was, of course, no different. It was a perfectly fine chocolate lava cake, probably, but the word _decadent_ had really gotten her hoping it would contain even a trace of the flavor of a society’s downfall or something. 

Judging from the glances he kept giving the sinfully decadent lava cake, the Principality What’s-His-Name was apparently pretty well-versed in considering gluttony as well.

“You’ve barely touched your food,” he said. “Is it quite alright?”

“Yeah, it’s fine, it’s just…” She sighed. “Not what I was hoping.” After a beat, she figured it probably couldn’t hurt to try to curry a little favor, and added, “You can have the rest of it, if you want,” pushing her plate in his direction.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, eagerly accepting the plate, “Why, thank you!” And then he flashed her a smile so bright it knocked the wind out of her.

“Uh, okay,” she blurted after an involuntary cough. “Sure. No problem.” She looked over at Crowley, wild-eyed. Did he just deal with beatific angel smiles like that all the time? He put up with that _on purpose?_

“You get used to it,” he shrugged in response. She doubted it, but whatever. 

With a delight that made Nil itchy, which shouldn’t have been possible, the angel considered what remained of his order of quiche lorraine and his drink and the newly-acquired cake and dug in with way more enthusiasm than was necessary, especially from an angel. Nil had seen a lot of indulgent eaters of artisanal whatevers, but this Principality was on another level. He seemed to be about ten seconds from trying some kind of bold new experiment in creating a breed of Nephilim that were half-cake instead of half-human. Crowley, meanwhile, had made kind of a token effort at keeping up appearances, eating-wise, but for the most part, he was just watching the angel. Nil didn’t blame him, to be honest, it was kind of fascinating, in a nature documentary sort of way.

She gave Crowley a conspiratorial little smirk. “This angel friend of yours is kind of a hedonist, huh?” she asked, not even bothering to hide that she was mildly impressed. The angel, on the other hand, was not, and he “tsk”ed rather loudly between bites of lava cake.

“For Heaven’s sake, I do have a name,” he protested. Nil jumped, remembering suddenly that upsetting the rogue angel who Crowley hung out with was probably very unwise. “You could at least make an attempt.”

“Right, shit, yeah, sorry.” Ugh, saying the word _sorry_ out loud made her skin crawl. “It’s just, you know, angel names…they’re hard to remember. Kinda all sound the same to me. All This-ael and That-iel and whatever the hell else. Don’t you people get confused? Like, say what you will about Beelzebub, and there’s _plenty_to say, but nobody forgets that asshole’s name.” It probably didn’t hurt that Beelzebub would manifest a swarm of flies in, at best, your mouth, if irritated, but Beelzebub was always irritated and so in Nil’s opinion it wasn’t a great teaching aid.

The angel looked affronted, but kept darting his eyes back and forth between her and Crowley, who was evidently trying, but not very hard, to stifle a laugh, like this was a private joke between them. And that was all well and good for the two of them, but Nil was starting to think, once again, about holy smiting and flaming swords. “For real, though, I don’t wanna like… offend,” and the words _don’t_ and _offend_ felt foreign so close together in her mouth, “so I’m gonna really try. Lay it on me again?”

“Aziraphale,” he said patiently.

“_Aziraphale,_” she repeated. “Damn, that’s a lot of name.” She took a moment to marvel that he’d been saddled with a name like that and not just immediately Fallen. Poor guy had plenty of reason to be mad at God right there. “Alright. Aziraphale. Ah-zee-ra-fail. Okay.” She leaned back in her chair and went for her drink to wash the taste of the word _sorry_ out of her mouth. “Ugh, that’s the first time I’ve ever sincerely apologized. Gross, I hate it. Ew.” She made a grotesque face, partially out of instinct and partially to make herself feel better. Nearly an hour with these two legendary rebels and so far she’d been disappointed by another cake, apologized to an angel, and learned absolutely goddamn nothing. If it didn’t smell so unlike sulfur and decay in this restaurant, she’d suspect she’d never actually left Hell.

“You mentioned research,” Crowley said, changing the subject with the deftness one might expect from someone who actually had practice socializing. “How’d you get Dagon to let you look at the files?”

“I didn’t really _get_ Dagon to do anything, I just kinda… do… stuff.” She shrugged. “Generally, nobody takes any notice of anything I do. And Dagon’s easy anyway. I think the only words I’ve ever said to her were ‘Beelzebub said.’ She’s never been curious to find out whether or not what Beelzebub said was actually relevant to what I was doing.” It was Nil’s professional opinion that Dagon was kind of a brown-noser, which, as a fellow denizen of Hell, Nil could begrudgingly respect. 

“So you want, what,” Crowley said, with a flippant gesture, “Employee of the Month or nothing?”

“No,” Nil replied through gritted teeth. “I just want to go back to my baseline level of standard unhappiness. Unremarkably middling job performance. The problem is, you left a big freaking _hole_ in the overall numbers that’s making everyone look worse in comparison, and I _really don’t want to look worse._” In Hell, being fired for poor job performance was a lot more literal, and you still had to keep going to work afterward. “Or, alternatively, I wouldn’t say no to just being able to do what you did, and leave the game behind altogether, but you guys said that one’s off the table, so.”

“Well who wouldn’t,” Crowley replied. “It’s not meant to be the most enjoyable job.”

“It's not that I don't like the job,” Nil quickly clarified. “I mean, okay, no, I hate the job, but not because I hate the _work,_ I only hate the job because it's designed that way. Like, I get the whole eternal torment thing, but that's just,” she pointed upward with a frown, “y’know, there's no reason we should do it to _ourselves._ The whole place was _founded_ on the idea that we don't have to keep doing stuff just because that's how we've done it since creation, but like, what's changed since the Fall? Like, appreciably?” Crowley thought a moment.

“The stench is… different?”

“Alright, granted, the stench department does exceptional work,” Nil conceded. “But besides that.” She looked around, feeling out to make sure that the only demons in earshot were herself and the only successful defector, before saying, in hushed tones, “Let me get a little bit… whatever the reverse of blasphemous is, here: I have serious issues with the leadership, if you get me.” 

“The _leadership_ — you mean _Satan?_” Crowley’s surprise seemed to almost immediately melt into glee, and he grinned at her. “Are you… are we about to slag off the old boss?”

“I mean, I assume you can be cool about it, given… ” And she gestured vaguely at everything around them, in an attempt to indicate his abandonment of Hell for _all this,_ and then for emphasis, she threw in a final hand-thrust at Aziraphale, who had by now gone back to the cake and was raptly watching the conversation in front of him.

“By all means,” Crowley said.

“It just pisses me off so much! We had… or, well, Lucifer had, at least, control of this new realm to do with as he pleased! We could have taken the opportunity to make something cool, you know? Something that actually addressed all those reasons for the Rebellion in the first place! But then it turned out that there never really was any ‘us’. There was just _him,_ and what he wanted, and screw the rest of us, we were all just cannon fodder. I joined up with him because I wanted _liberation_, but all he did was reforge our chains. Like that song: _Meet the new boss, same as the old boss_. Well, worse than the old boss.” 

She adopted a mocking voice that she knew sounded absolutely nothing like Satan, but _did_ sound very stupid: “‘You don’t need to blindly accept anyone else’s dominion over you, always question authority! Except for mine! If it’s mine, _definitely_ swallow that shit totally unquestioningly or I’ll boil your eyes and put small animals in your intestines or whatever!’ Hypocritical windbag. Made me feel like a stupid asshole for believing in him so much. In the end, he was no better than the rest of the pompous-ass angels." Nil remembered herself and looked over at Aziraphale, adding, "Present company excluded, of course! You seem nice," which was true, he did seem nice, "I just had a lot of problems with how they ran things Upstairs, y’know?" She expected him to purse his lips and tut at her some more. But he didn’t, he just seemed to be studying her, very seriously. Nil wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

“You Fell because you wanted _social reform?_”

“Still do,” Nil corrected. “Just… a lot harder to take any concrete steps these days. ‘Cause of, you know… the Devil.” Aziraphale looked at Crowley, and opened his mouth to say something.

“Don’t,” Crowley preempted.

“You have no idea what I was going to say,” Aziraphale said.

“Doesn’t matter.” Crowley held up a warning finger. “I know that look on your face. Don’t.” 

Nil forcibly pried her brain from its attempt to overthink what _that_ whole interaction could possibly mean, and decided to distract them all with the dumb idle thought that had just popped up in there instead.

“Hey, you know,” she said, cautiously grinning, “I think we've found something we can all actually totally agree on! Screw that guy! Yeah?” she grabbed her drink and held it aloft.

“… Mmyeah, alright, I can drink to that,” Crowley said. He raised his own glass and looked at Aziraphale expectantly.

“I'm not sure if that's really a proper toast—”

“Just clink the glass, angel."

“Oh, very well.”

“To telling Ol’ Scratch to fuck off,” Nil smiled as they all touched glasses. “Man, I hope he doesn't hear me up here.” Wouldn’t that be just her luck, Nil thought, to narrowly escape death or torture at the hands of the two infamous rebels, only to find the Lord of Darkness upset with her when she got back? But it wasn’t like His Lordship tended to be in the habit of paying any attention to Nil, so she was probably okay there.

“So,” Crowley said, after downing his drink, “you hate the management. Understandable.”

“Mm-hmm,” Nil nodded. “There's no growth potential, either! Everyone's got the same ranks they've had for centuries, regardless of job performance. Like, Hastur was a temptation powerhouse back in the day, I get that, but what's the most recent memorable thing he's done? Get humiliated! By you! But _he's_ still a Duke of Hell and _I'm _ —”

“Nil,” Aziraphale said consideringly.

“Eeyup,” Nil replied.

“Your name, I mean,” he clarified. “It’s another word for _nothing_. Surely that can't be helping matters. Have you thought about going by something else?”

“That feels like kind of an insulting suggestion,” she replied, and only barely stopped herself from adding _‘especially coming from someone named Aziraphale.’_

“I only meant,” someone named Aziraphale continued, “there’s a kind of psychology to this sort of thing.” Clearly trying and failing utterly to be discreet, he glanced at Crowley.

“I’m gonna stop you right there: my name situation doesn’t compare to his.” Nil pointed to Crowley. “_Crawly _ was an objectively stupid name, okay, and once he started manifesting in a form with legs most of the time, it became even stupider. In his place, yeah, I woulda done the same thing, even with how long it took before it caught on.”

“She’s got a point,” Crowley added, looking at Aziraphale, “not everyone took to the name change as fast as you did.”

“But it took me ages before I stopped getting it wrong,” Aziraphale said, and he sounded almost heartbroken about it. “That was _fast?_”

“Not a considerate bunch, demons,” Crowley shrugged.

“Yeah, we don’t really tend to _do_ professional courtesy,” Nil said. “Or… any other kind of courtesy. Though everybody’s suddenly a lot more keen to use your chosen name down there after the show at the trial.”

“Figures.” 

“Anyway, this is all a moot point,” Nil said, waving her hand. “I like my name! It’s catchy, and easy to remember, and it's had a nice long time to get that deep magic in there! So what if it means ‘nothing,’ that shouldn't… mean anything.” She sat up a little straighter and puffed out her chest. “It also means _me._” 

“I apologize, then,” Aziraphale said, “I shouldn’t have assumed.” Nil coughed again, feeling like _kindness _ had punched her in the lung. She’d anticipated a lot of possibilities when she planned this encounter, but an _angel_ treating her like someone worth respecting definitely hadn’t been on the list. Just as she had after the cake exchange, Nil threw Crowley a look meant to communicate something along the lines of _what the shit, is he always like this or what,_ but his responding expression didn’t have much of an answer for her, so she decided to drop it.

“It’s whatever,” she said, both about her job and in response to Aziraphale’s apology. “I'm not looking for infamy, or anything. Being overlooked has a lot of benefits. Watch this.” Nil stood up from her chair and made eye contact with an approaching waiter. Well, eye-contact was not an entirely accurate term: Nil very plainly fixed her stare on him, but he looked right through her. Her gaze flickered, for an instant, to the heavily-laden tray he was carrying, and she felt a little jolt of anticipation. This was going to be a good one. She rolled her shoulders.

Nil cleared her throat loudly, cracked her knuckles, and scooted her chair very loudly with her foot. In normal circumstances, there was no way the waiter should have been able to miss her. Then, with an entirely unnecessary flourish (because after all, it wasn’t every day she got to show this off), she kicked out her leg in front of his feet, still looking him right in the eye. And the waiter, taking no notice of Nil at all, tripped over her fantastically.

Several orders arced magnificently through the air, drenching two families in someone else's food. Someone's boozy drink fell exactly perfectly: The glass knocked over the tealights providing romantic candlelight at another table, and the candle flame caught the alcohol on the tablecloth, starting a small fire that neatly slaughtered the mood of a date that had previously been going well. The waiter himself face-planted directly into their own table, exactly between Crowley and Aziraphale, missing the latter's quiche plate by two inches, and jostling both of their drinks threateningly. Both of them looked at Nil, as she watched the scene with icy, undisguised pride.

The waiter righted himself. Several children were crying now. One woman was loudly demanding to speak to someone about all this. Synchronized swearing accompanied the attempts to put out the burning tablecloth nearby. Nil sat back down in her chair.

“Deepest apologies, gentlemen,” the waiter said in a pleading voice, directly to Crowley and Aziraphale, but not to Nil, whom he did not even acknowledge.

“Hey, Crowley,” she smirked, "what about your niece's drink?" Without breaking eye contact, she batted her own glass directly off the table like a house cat.

“What about my niece's drink?” Crowley repeated, bewildered. 

“Who?” And _then_ the waiter finally looked at Nil. “Oh! So sorry, miss!”

“Oh, no, please don’t worry about it,” Nil said, suddenly sweet. “The important thing is that you’re okay! You’re not hurt, are you?”

Angels and demons alike all had the ability to fiddle with exactly how perceptible they were to humans; it was an essential job skill. But Nil, in her own not-so-humble-opinion, had elevated it to an art form. She’d gotten so good at blending into the scenery, at not being noticed when she didn’t want to be, that she could even pull it off to an extent among other immortal winged-types. That, though, wasn’t magic or miracle as much as it was mind-games. She was very good at making herself eminently ignorable: quiet, slouchy, nondescript. And then, while everyone was busy paying no attention to her, she paid close attention to _everyone._

Nil’s greatest secret weapon was her ability to strategically rein in her natural obnoxiousness, and release it only in precision strikes. Such as, for instance, unleashing absolute miserable chaos on a crowded restaurant with one well-considered trip that no one even noticed was deliberate. 

“You’re a public menace,” said Aziraphale.

“Why, thank you,” Nil said, tossing her hair.

But to Nil’s surprise, this was apparently the spirit in which he had actually _intended_ the remark, because he replied with a cheerful “You’re very welcome,” before turning to Crowley and adding, “Wasn’t that impressive?”

“I just sent a huge cloud of despair and potential wrath and general negative emotion spiraling all through this restaurant,” Nil said, “Aren’t you supposed to find that, like… repellent?”

“Well, yes, but I also find the furniture in Crowley’s flat repellent; that doesn’t mean it’s not well-made. I do recognize good craftsmanship when I see it.”

“You don’t like my furniture?”

“There is not one remotely comfortable place to sit in your entire home, dear. It’s all very visually striking, but it’s a nightmare to spend time on.” Aziraphale looked at Nil, and, answering a question she did not ask, he said, “All flat planes and sharp corners and black stone.” And despite herself, Nil smiled a little: she could just picture the kind of dumbass conspicuous-minimalism Patrick-Bateman-goes-goth setup Crowley probably had. “But the plants are absolutely lovely,” he reassured Crowley with that painfully-bright smile of his. “So lush and verdant!”

“Nah,” Crowley said, making a big show of rolling his eyes with his entire body, so it could be seen despite the sunglasses, “I put so much work in, and they’re still so disappointing.” It seemed Crowley, ever the innovator, was not satisfied with the concept of humblebragging, and was testing out a new twist on the idea that replaced false modesty with petty complaining. “Toil away with the plant mister for who-knows-how-long and they still have the nerve to get all spotty.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about; I haven’t seen such pristine greenery since before the Industrial Revolution.”

Nil was rapidly losing what little control she had over this conversation. She took a second to baffle, once again, that these two easily-distracted goof-bags had somehow _stopped Armageddon_ before she tried to get things back on track.

“Anyway,” she said, pointedly louder than necessary, “you’ve seen my credentials now. So about that help…?”

“What d’you even need my help for?” Crowley gestured to the couple who’d had the table fire: one was shouting at a staff member about refusing to pay, and the other was throwing around phrases like _‘it was just an accident’_ and _‘we are in public’_ and _‘you always do this’_ in response. “Looks like you’ve got things well in hand.”

“No, yeah, I mean,” Nil said, “I know I kick ass at this, but it’s small potatoes, y’know? I’m looking to scale up.”

“I’ll help you on the condition that that _wasn’t_ a pun about serpents,” Crowley said.

“Well, now you say that, I kinda wish I’d thought of that shitty joke,” Nil said, “but no, I wasn’t making a crack about the snake thing.”

“Alright, let’s talk specifics. What’s your CV like?”

“Nothing like _yours,_” she groaned. “It’s… adequate, I guess. Minor-to-moderate successes. I mean, I’ve been screwing around America for a while, and that place has been a friggin’ circus since they colonized it, so, you know, the work kinda does itself. When I first started looking into your stuff, I noticed you did really well with sowing a lot of low-grade human misery at once, so I tried my hand at that. And like, it worked _okay._” She slouched in her chair, very unsatisfied with just okay. “Started a lot of really stupid Internet memes, some overpriced food trends… picked a lot of pointless fights on Twitter, that one’s still fun… but I guess my biggest success story is that, a few years ago, I got it in my head to get into politics. I mean, it’s fish in a barrel, right? So I thought it’d cause a nice national headache if I tempted just a _whole slew_ of completely unqualified people to run for President.” Nil allowed a pregnant pause to hang in the air after she finished that sentence. Crowley shifted positions very, very deliberately. Aziraphale dropped his fork.

“You can’t mean,” Aziraphale gasped, as though he had just gotten to the big twist in a really good thriller and not seen it coming at all, “_you’re _ responsible for —”

“_No,_” she wailed preemptively, slumping down onto the table with her head in her hands. “No, he wasn't one of mine! I missed the opportunity of probably several lifetimes!”

“But you just said —”

“I mean, I suspect I had _something_ to do with it, but only indirectly. I think the sea of dud candidates I tempted _inspired_ him to think he could do it too. Like a temptation-by-proxy. But I never went near him myself. I mean, why bother? The guy knocks out all Seven Deadlies on, like, an hourly basis, and occasionally invents a few more we didn’t think of. He’s on lock. Tempting him would be like… like…”

“The opposite of preaching to the opposite of the choir?” Crowley finished.

“Exactly, yeah.” She ran her fingers through her scalp, frustrated about this all over again. “And then not only did he run, but then, with zero diabolical intervention, he _wins?_ The humans totally outdid us on that one! You know how long the effects of a Presidency last? That’s gonna be decades of discontent and misery! And I can’t take credit for any of it!”

“C’mon, sure you could,” Crowley said, almost encouragingly. “You said yourself, temptation-by-proxy, you could get something out of that.”

“It wouldn’t stand up,” she said.

“Eh, you could just fudge it a little bit,” Crowley said. As if it were nothing. Her jaw fell open, and she could hear her own stunned blinking. 

“_‘Fudge it’_?” she repeated, after what felt like hours staring at him. 

“Yeah, you know, just… embellish some details in your report. You’ve never done that?”

“No!” she shouted back. “No, you lunatic, no one does that! Nobody _lies to Satan! _”

“Ghk, ‘_lies to Satan,_’ psh. He doesn’t even read the things. He’s got better things to do. Worse things to do, whatever.” He paused as another waiter brought out a replacement for Nil’s sacrificed drink, and again, apologized to Crowley and Aziraphale for the inconvenience, but not to Nil. “It’s barely even lies, anyway. More… creative reinterpretation. Convenient omissions. That sort of thing. Really? Never?”

“Crowley,” she said, very serious. “We work for the forces that _invented dishonesty._ So no, it never occurred to me to attempt to deceive them in any way. I’m not exactly itching to find out what happens if you get caught trying. Y’ever been sent for a dip in that Lake of Fire? Shit sucks.”

“Yeah, I’ve _been_ late to meetings, thanks.”

“Then I don’t need to tell you, _shit sucks!_”

“Look,” he said, leaning toward her, and instinctively, she leapt backward so violently she toppled her chair over. “Would you stop that, we’re not gonna kill you!” Nil scrambled to her feet and righted her chair. “We’re in public. Embarrassing.”

“Oh, no one’s gonna notice,” she assured him, sitting back down. “It’s kinda my whole thing.”

“Anyway, you wanted the secrets to my success? Lesson one.” He leaned in again, more cautiously, and Nil avoided jumping this time. “The thing about humans is that… they’re kind of better at this than us. You think of some great torment and they've already beaten you to it and taken it to the next level.” 

“And elected it to the highest office in the country,” Nil bit out.

“Exactly. But you still put in the work, right?” Nil could hear the shift in tone in his voice, the silky hint of _totally reasonable logic_ to convince the target: this was his _temptation_ voice. “And it still got done, didn’t it? What’s it matter who did it? You still deserve some credit.” The gears turned in Nil’s head, neatly filling the blank spaces between his words with meaning.

“Wait, so are you saying you didn't even _do_ some of that stuff you got all those commendations for? You were just, like… _gonna?_”

“Intentions count, apparently,” he shrugged. “Or at least they’re not checking up, if they don’t. I can’t have been the only one to test out what I could get away with. You even just said, about the Dagon thing!”

“That’s only _Dagon!_ Sure, she’s a more-respected peon than me, but she’s still a peon. If she doesn’t check up on what I say and Beelzebub catches it, she’s just as boned as I am. Most of us aren’t comfortable being _experimental_ with the bosses! I’m pretty sure that goes for both sides. Back me up on this, Az.”

“Aziraphale,” Aziraphale corrected politely.

“Right.”

“Look,” Crowley said, “if Satan calls you up and starts congratulating you on the job you’ve supposedly done, would _you_ correct him?” Nil opened her mouth to answer, but then grimaced instead, thinking about the idea of _correcting_ the Lord of Hell.

“Alright, that’s… that’s a decent point. I’ll give you that one. Still, the size of the effort on you, to have gone around deceiving the King of Lies for literally Satan-doesn’t-even-know how long! And here _my_ dumb ass was, admiring your record! I mean, guess you probably earned a few Mulligans when you inflicted Original Sin on humanity, that was a big get, but… ” A thought occurred, suddenly, about that Greatest Hits list Crowley had contributed so much to, and she lifted her head back up to peer very suspiciously at him. “You… _did_ do the thing in the Garden of Eden, at least, right?”

“‘Course I did!” He had the gall to sound offended. “Got a witness and everything,” he added, pointing at Aziraphale. Aziraphale gave Nil a cheerful little wave, as though seeing her for the first time.

“Oh, wow, you two really do go way back, huh?” They glanced at each other, and then back at her, smiling just slightly. “Alright, but like, now it’s gonna bother me if I don’t find out what was real and what was fake. You really did do the M25, right?” Crowley bristled again.

“D'you think major motorways form obscure occult sigils _by accident?_ But that's my point, that was a human idea that would have made everyone miserable regardless. So then I got a hand in, polished it up…”

“And you get to take credit for _all_ the ensuing misery,” Nil finished, nodding. “That’s pretty damn slick, you really _are_ a wily son of a bitch.” She was jealous. That was as close as anyone got to a professional compliment, in their line of work. “Okay, uh, Spanish Inquisition?”

“I was in the neighborhood and they assumed.”

“Printer maintenance?”

“All me.” He turned to smirk at Aziraphale. “Do you know that printer ink costs more to buy than human blood?”

“Crowley, that is _macabre,_” Aziraphale replied, but he sounded less disapproving than maybe he should have.

“Caligula?”

“That one was… about forty-sixty. Didn’t much need my help.”

“Wait, were you the forty or the sixty?”

“The forty. He _really_ didn't need help being a bastard. The horse thing was mine, though.” Nil snorted.

“Uhh, what else… the shitty pockets on women's jeans?”

“That one came back to bite me in the arse, but yes.”

“Okay, I don't believe for a second you actually started World War II.”

“Nah. I was trying to arrange another comedy of errors like the start of the first one, but the humans had other ideas.”

“Moulin Rouge?”

“...The cabaret, or the musical?”

“The cabaret, stupid. Whatever you were going for with the musical, it didn’t really land Downstairs. Lusty French dancing did. Was that actually you?” 

Crowley paused. “I don’t recall, actually.” But now _Aziraphale_ looked mildly offended.

“I should say not,” he said airily, giving Crowley a sidelong glance that felt significant. Nil’s inherent sense for interpersonal drama went off, and she went for her drink in anticipation. “You were in no state to contribute anything to the performing arts. You were asleep at the time.” 

“Ah, right.” He glanced back at Nil. “That was Aziraphale, then.”

Nil choked on her drink.

“_That was Aziraph_ — Are you serious?!” She pointed at the man-shaped being still eating the cake she ordered. “_This one?_ This Aziraphale? There’s not, like, another one?” Which she knew was a stupid question as she asked it; demon or not, Nil couldn’t imagine a God who even pretended to be just and loving giving _two_ unfortunate creatures a name like that.

“Oh, dear,” said the angel apparently responsible for the Can-can.

“Shit,” Crowley half-hissed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil comes to understand some things about Crowley and Aziraphale.

It was at this point that they had, apparently, forced their own hands. (Or, well, Crowley had, to Aziraphale’s very obvious exasperation.) They explained something to her that they called “the Arrangement.” She could hear the capital letter, which was frankly a little embarrassing. For them, not her. But then, she had sought them out, so really it was kind of embarrassing for her too. As was the fact that they nearly derailed the conversation no less than three times, getting tangled up in bickering about what “counted” as a temptation or a blessing and who was better at the other one's job. 

Which was not a rhetorical, what-if kind of argument, to Nil's total bewilderment. 

They almost made it sound reasonable, the tricky sons-of-bitches. And she could kind of follow along, for the first part: It _ would _ definitely be annoying to continually put in all the hard work the head office wanted, only to run into your counterpart on the other side undoing it all. But worrying about that sort of thing was well beyond Nil’s pay grade, so to speak, and she could not imagine facing that with anything more than a shrug and maybe the occasional physical fight, to work out the frustration and hopefully discourage that enemy agent a little. Never, in a million years (or certainly not the last six thousand and change) would she have considered _ flipping a coin _ to determine who would do the boring shit this time. For that matter, it never would have occurred to her that such a thing was even _ possible_; she had assumed that whatever one needed for performing angelic duties was lost in the Fall as a matter of course. Who would think to test it out? _ What, _ in Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Earth, and/or realms yet unknown, _ was wrong with these two? _

“So let me make sure I have everything totally straight here,” she said, half her face covered by her hand, gesturing weakly with the other. “The version they’re spreading around, on both sides as far as I can tell, is that you two are just a couple of lazy idiots, who really just didn’t want to deal with the uptick in _ actual work _ that would have come with Armageddon.”

“‘S a fair assessment,” said Crowley.

“Unfortunately,” agreed Aziraphale.

“But what you’re telling me, is that the reality of the situation is, you two _ unbelievable bastards _ have been _ actively colluding _ and tricking both Heaven and Hell for the better part of post-Crucifixion existence, trading off favors that literally go against not only both divine and infernal orders, but your respective biological, celestial natures? So you could, like… _ hang out?_”

“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds… ”

“Completely godbless insane? _ Yeah_. Yeah it does.” She put her elbows on the table to hold her head up, since this revelation seemed like it might knock it off at any moment. “_Why,_” she demanded, more like a death rattle than a question. The rest of it had kind of made some sort of twisted sense, but she could not figure a logical explanation for this. But neither of them seemed to have one, either.

“Erm,” Crowley put forth.

“Well,” Aziraphale offered, equally convincingly. They looked at each other, like they were both trying to tag the other in, and something in their expressions made it all finally click together in Nil's mind.

“Sweet Lucifer on a Sunday morning,” she muttered in dawning horror. “You two actually sincerely _ like _ each other, don't you? You’ve got real, genuine _ affection _ for each other.” Forget holy water and fuck a flaming sword, this was the most bone-deeply chilling thing Nil had ever encountered. Crowley and Aziraphale didn't even have the decency to deny it, both instead just sitting there looking sheepish and continuing to stammer noncommittally. “Oh, I might throw up.”

“Please don't,” Aziraphale said in a tone like she had just offered to pay the bill.

“Look, it's — well.” Crowley then spent at least ten seconds conjuring various non-word verbalizations in lieu of anything coherent.

“Shut up, stop making letters at me,” she snapped. “You know how long I spent trying to figure out which one of you was the real mastermind, screwing over the other? But this! This is so much _ worse! _ It turns out nobody's screwing anybody? Or, at best, you're just, like, _ mutually _ screwing each other?” Both of them damn near changed color. Nil screamed and pounded her fists on the table. “What am I supposed to do with this information?” Of course, she meant this in a rhetorical sense: _ how was she meant to continue, knowing this, _ but it did not seem to be taken that way.

“You could start,” Crowley said, suddenly menacing in a way that called that bathtub back to Nil's mind, “by keeping your mouth shut about it.”

“Oh, wow, thanks,” she replied, feeling her voice pitch upward outside of her control, “Good thing you said something, because I was _ definitely _ gonna immediately tattle on a couple of unkillable, fearless psychos who _ care _about each other!”

“Maybe, if you thought there might be something in it for you,” he said, and if it were any other demon with any other huge secret, he would probably have been right.

“Oh yeah, for sure,” Nil spat, instead, “I’ve spent every second of our acquaintance in intense mortal terror, but why not!”

“You’ve _ also _ spent every second of our acquaintance complaining that you don’t have the leverage to either get ahead or get out!”

“Right, and I’m gonna try and get it by snitching on you! _ That _ won’t cause me any problems!” Nil’s voice was very decidedly hysterical again. “Because the first thing everyone thinks of when they picture wrathful demons or vengeful angels is _ robust protections for whistleblowers!_”

“There is no need to make a scene,” Aziraphale said quietly, reaching a hand out to her in a gesture she assumed was meant to be calming. It was not calming.

“I'm not making a scene!” She pointed, defensively, at Crowley. “_He's _ making a scene! I'm physically incapable of making a scene!”

“Oh, and I’m _ perfectly _ willing to make it a crime scene,” Crowley growled, like he thought she needed reminding, as if she’d forgotten for even a second what had happened to Ligur. 

“Ten minutes ago you were all, ‘we’re not gonna kill you, stop being crazy,’ what the shit happened to that?”

“There’s other ways to shut you up.”

“Oh cool, great, _ the demon who does blessings _ is gonna torture me now for no reason!”

“Now that's enough, from both of you!” Aziraphale did not shout, but his tone was forceful enough that he didn't have to. Nil shrunk backward in her chair immediately. He looked defiant and commanding and altogether way cooler than anyone wearing a bow tie had any right to, even with chocolate lava sauce on the corner of his mouth. Nil thought she could smell the ozone of a lightning strike, but she wasn’t sure if her fear-fueled imagination was supplying that for her. “Surely we are all capable of discussing this matter like mature, civilized, human-shaped celestial beings.”

“Sorry, angel,” Crowley muttered. After a beat, he added, “But I'm right. We shouldn't trust her.”

“Perhaps you should have thought about that before you let slip about who really did the Moulin Rouge,” Aziraphale said primly, eliciting a wince from Crowley. Damage done, Aziraphale softened a little. “Crowley, the poor thing is clearly terrified, and she's come to us looking for help.”

“She’s a _ demon_, Aziraphale,” Crowley said, as if he weren’t one himself. “They’ve finally left us alone. If she goes back and lets on that there was more to it than just the Armageddon thing, and they suddenly get interested again — ”

“You're right, you're right,” Nil said over him, before he could start detailing what exactly would happen if she narced. Hopefully, that communicated her intentions at least a little. “You shouldn't trust me. I'm an unrepentant asshole, and I'd sell you out in an instant if I thought it'd do me any good. But it _ won’t _do me any good. I know that.” She gestured at Aziraphale’s water glass. “One quick benediction over the complimentary water from Azi here, and it’s curtains for me, and for nobody else in this restaurant.” 

“It’s _ Aziraphale_,” Aziraphale amended. “And I’d prefer to avoid that. It would be rather ghoulish, don’t you think?” Nil could only laugh.

“_Ghoulish_, he says,” she said, grinning madly. “You two have broken my goddamned brain, you know that?” It was all too much, she had to take the edge off somehow. From a pocket that hadn’t existed before, she produced her hideous red-and-black vape stick and went to town billowing clouds. She needed the sweet head-rush of inconveniencing the other patrons again, and she figured the nicotine wouldn’t hurt either.

“Oh for the love of—” Crowley grimaced, fanning away the clouds of vapor with one hand. “Don't do that _ here_.”

“Oh, excuse me, has the guy who was just threatening to torture me performed enough _ holy deeds _ that he cares about the rules now?” She huffed dramatically. “Gonna scold me for vaping in a nice restaurant?” If she was gonna die anyway, she figured she might as well make a jackass of herself.

“No, I just don’t want you doing that anywhere we have to be seen with you,” Crowley spat, making a grab for the vape pen that Nil managed to evade. “You look like an idiot, and they think we're related.” 

“Why does it smell like strawberries?” Aziraphale looked bemused. “Is that a miracle?” Okay, so the nicotine wasn’t actually helping her nerves that much at this point, and really, she should have expected it was only going to serve as yet another thing to distract the two of them. Nil ripped one last extra-fat puff of cotton to underline her displeasure before stashing the vape pen away again.

“Look, okay,” she groaned. “I knew you guys were operating on a whole ‘nother level when I went looking for you. That was the whole point. But I just… was not ready for that level to be, like, eight or nine levels beyond my comprehension. I’m not gonna snitch on you, partially because I don’t think anybody would even believe me.” Frankly, _ she _ wouldn’t believe her. A sort of truce based on mutually shared interests was, well, _ very _ uncommon, but not entirely unheard of. But this was different. Companionship! Camaraderie! _ Fondness! _ “It’s just… you’ve cracked my head open like a friggin' egg, you gotta know that, right? This shouldn’t be _ possible. _ Like, they said you’d gone native, but holy _ shit_, dude. This is, like, a seismic shift in my whole, like… _ ethos_, or whatever.” She wasn’t entirely sure she was using the word correctly, but that was the least of her concerns right now. “You have thoroughly fucked my whole sense of good and evil with this. Which is a pretty big problem, because _ evil is my job._”

“Oh, no,” Crowley said, “you want help with that too, now, don’t you?”

“I _ meeeeeean,_” Nil said with an overexaggerated shrug. 

“They say the Lord helps those who help themselves,” Aziraphale beamed. Nil fixed him with a glare that would have set a human on fire, but on an angel, only resulted in a slightly put-out, “Right, sorry. Poor choice of words.” Aziraphale waved his hand, as if to clear the dumb thing he said out of the air, and continued. “I mean to say, perhaps this is so overwhelming because you don’t have the proper context for it. Have you studied much philosophy?”

“Ew,” Nil responded. “That’s human stuff.” And not even the_ fun _ human stuff, like coffee or weird porno or cool jackets.

“There you are, then,” Aziraphale said, like that explained everything. “Perhaps that attitude is part of your problem. Frightfully clever at coming up with new modalities of thinking, humans.” The last bit he said with a delighted little smile so sweet that Nil was pretty sure it was actively giving her cavities. 

“So, you're saying, I should, what,” she said, ignoring her tooth decay, “take a Philosophy 101 class at the local community college to understand your impossible relationship?” Did they have community colleges in England? Community _ universities_, maybe? Was that a thing? 

“Nonsense,” Aziraphale replied. “At this point we have a vested interest in helping you, don't we?” This question seemed to be directed more at Crowley than at Nil. Crowley made a noise that was somewhere between a snarl and a pout. 

“I mean, if you have time,” Nil followed up on Aziraphale’s suggestion, “after cutting out my tongue to make sure I don’t blab and, like, disemboweling me a little for good measure.”

“Oh, you mustn’t let him intimidate you too terribly,” Aziraphale said blithely, waving a hand at Crowley. “The hiss is worse than the venom, as they say.” Nil was pretty sure no one said that.

“Oi, don’t undermine me to my coworkers,” Crowley protested lamely, evidently having been successfully talked out of the torture threats. “I don’t gossip with other angels about you, do I?”

“Well that’s preposterous, angels don’t gossip,” Aziraphale said.

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

“_Other _ angels don’t gossip,” Aziraphale corrected, pursing his lips. “At any rate, I think Nil here would do well to let her mind breathe about all this. It is a bit much to take in, all at once. A bit of reading would be…” He trailed off, apparently deciding that another tooth-rotting smile, this time directed at Crowley, was the best possible end to that sentence. 

“Well,” Crowley considered, “if she buggers off to go read a bunch of philosophy tomes, that does mean she’s got to _ bugger off_.” He looked at Nil with affected nonchalance that she absolutely wasn’t buying anymore. “Aziraphale’s got loads of books you could read.”

“I’m not running a library,” Aziraphale said in protest.

“Could always _ sell _ her some books, then,” Crowley suggested, in that not-really-a-real-suggestion voice.

“Oh, fine.”

If someone had told Nil, that morning, that by the day’s end, she was going to be under the tutelage of not just the demon Crowley, but his rebel angel partner, Nil would have laughed derisively in their face. Well, no, Nil’s immediate reaction would have been surprise, at having been perceived thoroughly enough for anyone to tell her anything, followed by a full re-accounting of her demonic powers and maybe an assessment of her human presentation. But, assuming that everything checked out there, she would have gone right for the derisive laughter. 

And yet, here she was, following a meal out with the two anomalies of existence, being herded back into the backseat of that ostentatious old car again, to be taken back to the bookshop and given _ homework_.

On reflection, her life had been a lot less weird, that morning.

Leaving the restaurant was strange. Most of the day’s insanity had been relegated to the dining room, making it feel like almost some kind of alternate dimension in which any ridiculous thing was possible. But cars were _ real_, bookshops were _ real_, and so, apparently, was the world’s least likely actual friendship.

“Can I say something,” she piped up from the back seat, as Crowley started the engine, “before we get going and you start arguing about road safety? And uh,” she waffled, “it might make me kinda sound like an asshole, but…”

“Wouldn’t want that, would we,” grumbled Crowley.

“Good point,” she said, “but you guys have been pretty cool about, y’know, not murdering the shit out of me so far, and I would really like to stick the landing.”

“No one is going to kill you, dear girl,” Aziraphale said exasperatedly, turning slightly to look back at her. “Excepting, perhaps, Crowley’s driving.”

“Would you stop it, she’ll be fine.”

“It’s just, in retrospect, I probably should have expected… _this sort of thing_ from Crowley,” Nil said, ignoring Crowley's shout of “_the_ _fuck is that supposed to mean_” completely, “but I gotta say, I'm actually a little disappointed about it from _you_, Zira.”

“_Aziraphale_, if you please, and I hardly see what's so disappointing about it.” Well, that was a shame; she really thought she'd hit on something with “Zira,” but apparently he was insistent on the full name thing.

“Not about the demon-befriending thing," she said hurriedly, "that's rad as shit, actually! It's just, ugh, _ Crowley? _ Really?” 

“What’s wrong with Crowley?” Aziraphale’s question was gentle and puzzled, in stark contrast to all the outraged shouting coming from the driver’s seat that Nil was steadfastly disregarding. Suddenly it occurred to her that maybe Crowley had been deceiving Aziraphale all this time, just as he'd apparently done to everyone else. She felt a surge of genuine pity. 

“I don't know how to tell you this,” she said, as gently as she knew how (which wasn't very, but she tried, damn it), “but Crowley is a great big goddamn dork.”

“Oi,” Crowley yelled as the car slammed into reverse.

“Oh?” Aziraphale lit up with curious glee.

“I know all you probably see is this _ cool guy _ thing he puts on for the humans, and, like, granted, it's a killer act. But everybody Downstairs has seen behind the scenes, and we all know how hard he's actually trying. You shouldn't let him trick you! He is an absolute disaster!”

“Angel, I've changed my mind, we are killing her,” Crowley said, hitting the gas and peeling out into the street. “How fast can you bless a bottle of Evian?” But the threat was obviously pretty empty, as Aziraphale was clearly enjoying this too much to lend an assist in murdering Nil.

"A disaster? Whatever could she mean, my dear?"

"Nothing," Crowley said. "No idea."

“Oh man,” Nil blurted, “did you think everyone forgot about the classics Downstairs just because you stopped hanging around enough to get mocked to your face?” 

“Wha—_ classics _, don’t be ridiculous. There’s nothing to—”

“_Ireland_,” she said. Crowley's mouth snapped shut. Aziraphale’s hand flew to his mouth. Nil knew a politely-stifled giggle when she saw one. “I dunno what you’re so gagged about anyway; being so hated that everyone seizes on your every screw-up is the closest we get to ‘Well-Done’ stickers.” Privately, Nil would not have minded the occasional sticker, but it didn't seem particularly demonic to say so. “The boss never shut up about you, so, yeah, everybody had a big laugh about stuff like that corny slideshow you did when you proposed the M25, and the awful mustache you were wearing at the time.”

“It was the nineteen-seventies, _ everybody _ had an awful mustache,” Crowley offered in his defense. “I'd have looked more stupid without one.”

“Debatable,” Aziraphale muttered under his breath.

“And look, the holy water thing was pants-pissingly terrifying, but I'm still baffled you left your socks on.” This one at least seemed to rattle Aziraphale slightly.

“Dunno what I was thinking with that last one,” Crowley admitted. Aziraphale cleared his throat.

“There have been,” he said, “occasional… regrettable aesthetic decisions, I admit but — _ Crowley you’re meant to stop when it’s red! _— otherwise, I’m afraid I don't know what you mean.” He said that, but he didn’t look like he was having trouble understanding anything. Instead, his face was doing that warm sunshine-smile thing again, though less intense this time, more like the soft glow of a sunset, and his eyes kept darting back to Crowley.

“Oh,” Nil said, and now she could see her misunderstanding. “I get it,” she said, nodding solemnly. “You're a big friggin' dork, too.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil lays out some theological concerns with her new mentors, and also does a great deal of complaining.

So Aziraphale had let her borrow some books, though he had been an enormous diva about it. He’d dithered around the bookshop, tutting and muttering to himself and repeatedly second-guessing what books he would deign to let Nil hold in her arms. Crowley had made a comment about it, and Aziraphale had responded, scandalized, that he certainly didn’t intend to let Nil walk out with any of his _ first-editions. _ She considered telling him that he could just give her a reading list and send her off to rob the nearest chain store, but she’d hate to take the wind out of his sails, and she really wanted to see how long he would waffle for. The answer, it turned out, was at least another fifteen minutes and another two-and-a-half bickering sessions with Crowley. When he’d finally settled on a selection, Nil had been totally unable to resist; it was too easy. She’d put on her best “playing dumb” face (which, unlike most of her repertoire, was actually pretty convincing) and looked up at him as innocently as a demon could look at an angel.

“So, I eat ‘em, right? To gain their knowledge?” She instantly felt terrible about it: Aziraphale gasped in utter horror and drew back, looking as though he might literally discorporate on the spot. “_I’mkiddingI’mkiddingI’mkiddingI’mkidding,_” she shrieked, waving her free hand to try to calm him. “It was just a joke! I’m not gonna eat your books! I was never gonna eat your books!” Which, she felt, was an important thing to clarify, because Aziraphale had quickly recovered and was moving to furiously snatch the books out of her arms, and maybe reconsider his no-smiting policy. Despite all that, she did eventually manage to leave with an armload of borrowed philosophical texts, after some re-convincing.

That was three days ago. Nil would have liked to claim she’d been poring over the books single-mindedly since then, but really, she did not have that kind of attention span. Any more than an hour or so of reading philosophy made her feel antsy, and she had to put the books down and go cause some mayhem to re-center herself. And she was struggling very hard with the urge to scribble snarky notes and obscene doodles in the margins of these borrowed books. At some point during day two, she’d given up trying to resist completely, and instead popped into a coffee shop to steal some pretentious aspiring writer’s Moleskine, where she could safely redirect her desire to draw cartoon genitals without risking Aziraphale’s angelic wrath. (As she had expected, the notebook was less than a quarter filled when she nabbed it, since this chump was clearly more invested in the idea of Being A Writer than actually doing any _ writing_, so there was plenty of room for Nil to work, and she got to have some fun laughing at the tired cliches the previous owner had thought were worth writing down.)

But, by day three of her philosophical education, she had to accept that none of this was really helping her situation, no matter how many breaks she took to lure hungry pigeons into restaurants or write things like _ “hey OP quick question: what the fuck” _next to pulled quotes in her purloined notebook. She had to return to the drawing board.

Or, at least, to a still-lit store in Soho with a “closed” sign in the window.

Nil walked into the bookshop as though it were still open, strode directly into the back recesses, and without a word or any regard to the two people-ish beings already inside, placed the stack of borrowed books on the nearest available flat surface. Then, still silent, she promptly laid face down in the middle of the floor.

“I hate you both,” she declared, somewhat muffled by the antique rug her face was resting on.

“Oh dear,” said Aziraphale, gingerly stepping over to her. “It seems you had a rough time of it with the philosophers. Was it Kierkegaard? Camus?”

“None of it means anything, apparently,” she continued, heedless of whatever he’d said, limply lifting one hand off the floor to gesture vaguely with it. “Good, evil, it’s all the same shit; up is down, right is wrong, and if you two had just let Armageddon happen like you were supposed to, I could be pleasantly dead right now instead of thinking about any of this.”

“Sounds like a good-old-fashioned Nietzsche breakdown to me,” Crowley said, not looking up from his phone. Aziraphale hummed sympathetically.

“I’ll get you some tea, shall I?”

Nil meant to respond “piss off,” or maybe something stronger, but instead what came out was a very petulant “Yes, please.” Son of a bitch sweetheart angel probably made an excellent cup of tea, too, damn him. He swanned off to wherever one got tea from in this bookshop. With great and melodramatic effort, Nil propped her head up on her elbow so she could sort of look at Crowley over on the couch. “It wasn’t Nietzsche, by the way,” she pouted. “I was pretty on board with all that God is Dead stuff, actually, even if the Ubermensch crap that came after it was pretty irrelevant to my situation. But the, like, ‘screw God, we’ll do our own thing’ thing, that’s all pretty sensible to me.”

“I get where you’re coming from, but do me a favor and don’t talk about that stuff when Aziraphale comes back?” He continued fiddling with his phone, not bothering to look at her. “I’m already in enough pointless arguments for one night, thanks.”

“I’m just trying to emphasize, here, that this nihilist temper tantrum I’m having is your fault, not Nietzsche’s. Oop, hang on.” She felt her phone buzz a notification in her back pocket. There were at least some small joys left, she remembered as she pulled it out to look, still laying on her stomach. “I’m in the middle of this _ really _ stupid Twitter fight, it’s amazing. I think you’d really appreciate it actually, I—” But then she caught a glimpse of the smugly triumphant smirk Crowley was giving his own phone, and fully registered what he’d just said about _ pointless arguments. _ “Are you… _ also _ in the middle of a really stupid Twitter fight?”

“Er,” Crowley answered.

“Oh, goddamn it!” Nil flung her phone across the room and planted her face back onto the rug. “Can’t even frustrate humans without accidentally catfishing the only other demon on the internet. All those emojis. What a waste of data.” She kicked her feet a few times for good measure, and then rolled over onto her back. “Actually, can I like, vent, a little, as long as we’re angel-free here?”

“Mm,” Crowley said, turning his attention to his phone again, probably to play Candy Crush or something rather than actually listen to her. But even someone badly pretending not to tune her out was better than she’d had for centuries, so she’d take it.

“It just always seemed like a shitty deal to me, you know? The whole God thing, I mean.” She looked at the skylight above them, mostly because her eyes were just pointed in that direction anyway, but it did feel a little… _ symbolic_, maybe. “Like, I never asked to exist. Nobody did. Why the hell should we all be expected to spend the rest of our lives bowing and scraping in gratitude about it? Always trying and failing to repay this huge favor we owe that we never agreed to. ‘S bullshit.”

Crowley made a noncommittal, but vaguely-supportive-sounding noise. Which was more feedback than she’d ever actually gotten before, the Rebellion excluded.

“And why give us the ability to have thoughts and feelings or whatever if we’re all supposed to be mindless yes-men? Seems like kind of a dick move. Like, at least with the humans there’s obviously some kinda like… _ experiment _ about free will going on, so they get all these options and the game is all in seeing which ones they pick, but like… why give _ us _ the ability to discern options in the first damn place, just to get all resentful if we don’t pick the right thing?”

Crowley responded with another wordless nothing noise, but this one had the cadence of something like resigned agreement. Nil almost didn’t recognize the feeling of external validation lighting up her chest, but it was addictive.

“And not for nothing, but what the shit is that ranking system? I mean, the Archangels? Gabriel was always _ such _ a _ douchebag!_”

“Still is,” Crowley said. Nil flopped up into an actual sitting position.

“See?” She looked at Crowley, pointing at nothing for emphasis. “If it were up to me, dickweeds like that wouldn’t be allowed to be in charge of so much as a friggin’_ Starbucks! _”

“This is generally the point in the discussion where Aziraphale starts throwing around the word _ ‘ineffable,’ _” Crowley advised her, leaning backward and somehow sprawling even more on the couch than he already was. “I think mostly ‘cause he can’t stand that prick either.” Nil snorted. “Gave him a good scare, though, during that Hellfire thing. Almost singed his bloody cashmere.”

“Huh. Even though he’s so anti-smiting. Wouldn’t have thought he had that in him,” Nil said, with a proud little smirk.

“Oh, yeah,” Crowley said. “Full of surprises, Aziraphale.” 

“I guess that’s why you like him,” Nil said, more thinking out loud than anything else. Crowley didn’t get a chance to reply, because, speak of the angel: Aziraphale returned with not just a mug, but a _ tray_, to Nil’s bewilderment. He placed the whole spread on the floor in front of her: the silly novelty mug full of steaming tea, which she’d been expecting, but also a bowl of sugarcubes, a creamer of milk, a jar of honey with one of those wooden dripper thingies in it, and a small plate of freaking lemon slices.

“I don’t know how you take it,” he explained, when she looked up at him. 

“Ugh,” she groaned. Absolutely disgustingly considerate. Nil chunked a handful of sugarcubes into the mug, and, before they could even melt, she pounded the tea like a shot. “_Ugh_, it’s delicious,” she snarled, hunched over like a feral thing, steam coming out of her mouth. “I ought to spit in your eye.”

“‘S a compliment, angel,” Crowley added, in immediate response to the look on Aziraphale’s face. “Not good at… liking things.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, and he still looked unsure, but he was at least kind of smiling. Nil nodded seriously at him and gave a thumbs-up, returning for another drink. “Now, where are you having trouble, my dear?”

“I don’t think it’s the books,” Nil said, swishing her mug. “I mean, I don’t think the books are helping. It was cool of you to try to help me out, but these books, this philosophy stuff… it’s all for humans. I’m kind of approaching things from a more obscure angle.” She supposed all three of them were, once she said that. “It’s just that my concerns and questions are pretty hyper-specific, and these guys are all doing more general intellectual…” and here, she nearly said “masturbation,” but the very patient look Aziraphale was giving her made her course correct, and instead she finished with a wobbly, “uh, _ theorizing._”

“In that case,” he said, “why don’t you share your concerns and perhaps we can just work it out together?” Nil grimaced, eyes bulging, at the thought of _ sharing _ her thoughts and questions about morality with an _ angel_. Aziraphale really didn’t strike her as the type to be intentionally setting up traps, to bait her into being as eminently smite-able as possible, but goddamn if he didn’t keep doing it by accident. 

“Are you sure?” She turned to look at Crowley again. “D’you think that’s a smart move?”

“First time out?” He gave her a quick once-over with his shaded eyes and shrugged. “If you manage to find a line I haven’t crossed, I’ll be impressed.” Which wasn’t actually all that helpful, but Nil knew how this worked by now. It was probably the closest she was going to get to _ “I’ll let you know if you’re about to get yourself maimed,” _ because demons were not exactly in the habit of looking out for each other openly. Nil took a deep breath before beginning.

“Okay, so. Good versus evil, or whatever. I was never…” She made a swirly gesture with her hand. “Like, some things are definitely good, and some things are definitely bad, but it’s not so black and white, you know? I mean, it was always propaganda, to some extent: Heaven pushing the line that everyone up there is some kinda beacon of flawless righteousness; just _ conveniently _ ignore that if that were true, there wouldn’t have been a Rebellion in the first place. But whatever. I don’t wanna get too shitty about Heaven here, that’s not my point.” And she was trying to be mindful of Crowley’s request not to be _ too _ blasphemous around Aziraphale. “They’re just… very, ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us,’ and they use ‘good’ and ‘evil’ more as arbitrary descriptions for ‘pro-Heaven’ and ‘ _ not _ -pro-Heaven.’ And like, screw those guys, so yeah, I’m against them, and I guess that means I’m Team Evil, according to them, right? And they have a point, you know, I’m petty and obnoxious and selfish and rude as shit, and I like sowing chaos! So, you know, sure. My _ job _ is to be an agent of evil, spreading and encouraging nastiness and shitty behavior and, and, and, I dunno, anti-holy sentiments.”

Nil paused to look back and forth between the two of them, to see if they were following her so far. So far, so good.

“But then there’s you two. And like,” she pointed dramatically at Aziraphale, “_this _ bitch lied to God,” and then, ignoring Aziraphale’s expression, she pointed equally dramatically at Crowley, “and _ this _ bitch lied to Satan, and aside from the _ pure goddamn nerve _ that takes, to do it over and over again, I can’t make heads or tails of which is more morally unsound! Like, if you tell a lie, to the most evil creature, for the purposes of what is essentially sloth, is that like a triple layer cake of evil? _ Or! _ Or, does that instead go so far around the scale that it tips back into being good again, to upstage and infuriate the Lord of Darkness?”

“_Upstage _him?” Crowley said. “Ngh. Don’t like that.” 

“Well,” Aziraphale started, “I think in this particular case—”

“No, no, I’m not done! There’s more variables!” Nil said, totally failing to modulate her volume. “Like, if you were doing it for some kind of definitive material gain or whatever, that’d be a lot more cut and dry. But you did it because you’re _ friends_, which is a whole ‘nother wrench in the system! Where on the spectrum of selfishness versus altruism does _ that _ fall? Like, at first, I thought, maybe you could look at it like… like, a covetousness of a person? Meaning, it’s selfish because you’re protecting someone you perceive as _ yours_, in some way, kinda. But then I thought, isn’t friendship, like, a kind of _ love? _ Because that would be a whole other kettle of fish, because love is supposedly universally good, or something. But like, what’s the difference between selfishly laying claim to someone, and loving them, if it’s mutual, you know? Is love an inherently selfish act, because it makes you play favorites?” She paused to take another drink, and allow her dumb human lungs to do some of that breathing nonsense they liked so much. 

Both Aziraphale and Crowley made noises as if to say something, but Nil was finding herself unable to shut up, now that she’d gotten started. She’d never actually tried vomiting, since it seemed really unpleasant, but she was beginning to suspect this was kind of similar.

“And, by the way, sidebar, doesn’t the possibility that we can love and be loved kinda throw into question the whole idea of eternal torment for disobedience, if we could presumably become good over time? Like, isn’t it fucked up, then, to leave the rest of us festering miserably in the basement with almost no chance to make that kind of connection? Or do I only think that because I’m intrinsically flawed with evil thoughts, and that’s why I even rebelled in the first place? But then why the hell did the omniscient, omnipotent Almighty _ make me like that?! _” Crowley shifted on the couch to pull one of the throw pillows out from behind his back.

“Here you are,” he said way too casually, handing it over to Nil, who promptly buried her face in it and started screaming.

“I just —” she said, pulling her face out of the pillow. “I don’t _ get it! _ I feel like I should get it. I feel like _ we _ should get it! At least someone, one of us, _ somewhere_, should at least _ kinda _ get it! Or else how do we know that we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing, or undoing, or whatever?” She squeezed the pillow a little, adding, “_I thought I got over this like five thousand years ago! _ Argh!” She’d have thought that all that time in Hell would have forced some kind of closure on her, but no, all the uncertainty and confusion was flooding back full-force now. Apparently, just burying it and refusing to think about it was not as bulletproof a strategy as it seemed.

“Goodness,” Aziraphale said, and luckily, he turned his gaze to Crowley before he could spot Nil’s involuntary cringe at his twee-ness. “I’m feeling a sense of _déjà vu._”

“It’d be nostalgic,” Crowley agreed, “if it wasn’t so depressing. At least most of the times _ we _ had these conversations, we had the benefit of being drunk.”

“That was an option on the table?” Nil said, popping one of the lemon slices into her mouth whole, peel and all. “I coulda been getting drunk _ this whole time?! _ ” She bit down, releasing sour juice and bitter zest into her mouth, before adding, to Aziraphale, “And don’t gimme any of that _ ineffability _ shit, either. I know that’s a cop-out the higher-ups push so they don’t have to actually answer any hard questions. I’m sure you can do better than that.” His eyebrows jumped at the word ‘ineffability,’ like she had read his mind.

“How did you…?”

“Already told her,” Crowley said, leaning over to take back the throw pillow. “Try another one.”

“Am I really that predictable?”

“That's only been your go-to answer since the start of _ existence_,” Crowley said with another of those long-suffering full-body eye-rolls. “Entire shop full of books, you act like you’ve never heard of a thesaurus.”

“Hey, you know,” Nil said with a mirthless half-smile, “maybe that’s the answer. Maybe I just need a debate partner. Someone to play Devil’s Advocate against.” 

“What?” Crowley said, though she knew he'd heard her just fine.

“You’ve already got dibs on Aziraphale, so I guess he’s out,” she continued, as if he hadn't said anything, because he might as well not have, and if he was going to waste her time being incredulous instead of helpful, she wasn't going to acknowledge it.

“_Dibs_,” Crowley echoed. Nil ignored him entirely and turned her gaze to Aziraphale.

“Do you know anybody cool you could hook me up with? Like, do you know any angels who can hang? Anybody chill?”

“…_ Chill? _” Aziraphale repeated, looking totally lost. Which Nil probably should have seen coming. Aziraphale had probably stopped learning slang sometime before the turn of the twentieth century.

“I mean, you can't be the only angel who wouldn't insta-smite me, right?”

“Ah,” he said, starting to do something fidgety with his hands. “Well, I wouldn’t know.”

“Ah, shit.” Nil got the distinct feeling of having blindly stepped in something unpleasant. Metaphorically. “Well, that makes sense, actually,” she blurted, in hopes that she could talk her way out of whatever it was she'd talked herself into. “Why else would you hang around with Crowley?”

“Oh yeah, of course,” said Crowley, adjusting his posture so that he almost looked like someone who actually knew how a chair worked, “couldn’t be any other reason.”

“Shut up, don't be a baby, you know what I mean. Most angels would bury a sword in your face before bothering to get to know what a _ sparkling personality _ you have,” she said, rolling her eyes and wiggling her fingers theatrically for emphasis. “What I’m saying is, I assume Heaven didn’t get _ better _ about accepting constructive criticism and second-guessing after the Fall.”

“If one did have… lingering doubts,” Aziraphale said, obviously choosing his words in an even more deliberate way than usual, “there was no way of knowing who one could confide in.” _ Who could be trusted_, Nil thought, nodding.

“Nobody wants to end up unpersoned for thoughtcrimes.” Literary references were, apparently, a much safer bet than real slang, because Aziraphale clearly got that one. “Ironically, you probably are better off talking to one of _ us _ about it, than trying to hash it out with your fellow angels.” Which, when she thought about it, wasn't all that different from how things operated in Hell. Sure, the motivations for ratting out one's comrades were different, but the end result was the same: nobody talked to each other, because being honest was too dangerous. As above, so below; _ same shit, different celestial plane_.

“And even if I did know anyone who fit the bill,” Aziraphale continued, “I’m afraid they might not be inclined to take my call, these days.”

“Oh. Right,” she mumbled, recalling Eric the Legion's thrilling tale of what had happened Upstairs. “They're all pissed at you for stopping the Apocalypse from ravaging the planet.” Nil’s instincts told her to back off of the topic, that it might be _ dangerous _ to keep going, but she plowed forward anyway. “…Now that I think about it, that's kinda wack, huh? You're a Principality, isn't 'protect the humans' kinda the whole deal? They really tried to extinctify you for being too dedicated to your job?"

“I suppose so, yes,” he said, smiling sadly. Nil felt that sense of danger sharpen somewhat, like she was being watched by an unseen predator, even as she frowned deeply. 

“Ugh, that’s so… typical Heaven stuffed-shirt bullcrap.” The tension she was feeling ratcheted up another notch, but she was too fired up to stop now. “That’s the kind of thing that made me want to leave! They go on about justice and goodness, but it’s all a paper-thin justification for what they were gonna do anyway.”

“Nil,” Crowley started, voice low, but Nil wasn’t about to let him finish.

“No, no, screw that,” she said, all pretenses of being chill about Heaven abandoned. “It’s not cool! Aziraphale is _ nice! _He doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment!”

“Oh,” Aziraphale demurred, “thank you.”

“You don’t gotta thank me, it’s _ true_,” Nil replied firmly. “All up their own asses about _ entertaining angels unawares _ , but do any of them ever bother on the other end? You’re the only angel out here actually committed enough to kindness to be entertaining _ demons_, fully _ awares! _ Treating me — _ me! — _ like I’m an actual _ guest, _ like my company’s worth keeping, like I’m actually worth helping! Honestly, it’s almost off-putting, how nice you’ve been to me!” She crammed another lemon slice into her mouth before continuing, feeling more sour and bitter than ever. “All that, and how do they repay you? They get all mad that you’re proving better at being good than any of them, and they try to burn you up for stepping out of their shitty line! It’s despicable, for them to treat you like that!”

“That’s very kind of you to say—”

“No it’s not! I’m pissed off!” She windmilled her arms for emphasis. “This is wrath, right now! I don’t even know how to _ do _ kindness!”

“But there’s no need to get upset on my behalf, dear.”

“It’s not on your behalf,” she said automatically, but then, “Oh holy shit, it _ is _ on your behalf, isn’t it?” And that was a weird thing to realize. She'd never gotten so angry about _ someone else's _ mistreatment before; it had always been her own skin she was worried about. Or, well, _ herself_, as she'd been making rackets since long before she had skin. Yet, here she was, furious that the higher-ups in Heaven would be such _ assholes _ to Aziraphale for actually being decent. More furious, even, than she was about her own treatment: Nil, at least, was a little shit. She'd more than earned some ire and wrath.

Aziraphale, who would have been well within his rights to kill her on sight the first time she came into the bookshop, had just made her _ tea_. 

Nil couldn't stand the thought of anyone deliberately hurting him and calling it _ right_, after that.

But, then, did that mean…?

_ No. _ No, no, no. She refused to entertain the thought. Desperately looking for something to stop her brain from finishing it's sentence, she glanced back and forth between them. Unfortunately, she found the opposite of what she was looking for: Crowley had put his phone down and was actively paying attention now, perched on the edge of the sofa, his sunglasses slid down just far enough on his nose that she could see a sliver of yellow over the rims as he gaped at her. And suddenly, all she could think about was the goofy thought she'd had when they first met: _ Stupid bastard took me out to eat and didn't even try to kill me with his car! _ Not only had he not tried to kill her, he was down to help, despite her waltzing in here and threatening his car and telling embarrassing work stories about him. And no one, not even Nil, had appreciated him Downstairs! (Okay, well, the boss had, but his appreciation was very rarely _ pleasant_.) And for some reason, she found herself displeased by that thought, now.

“Oh, fuck _ me_,” she groaned. “You bastards infected me! I think… I think I sort of give a shit about you!” 

Neither of them said a word, which was maybe worse than anything they could have said. She didn’t even know what she would _ want _ them to say. And now all at once, her corporeal form was _ leaking _ from several of the face-holes, maybe broken somehow because these two stupid losers had tricked her into kind of liking them. Which was just the most infuriating thing she’d dealt with in ages, so naturally her hair was starting to sizzle and spark as well.

Nil burst into both tears and flames.

“Oh, ah,” Aziraphale said, hesitantly reaching toward her. “There, there.” He patted her shoulder unsurely without coming any closer and then looked to Crowley. “What does one do for this sort of thing?” Crowley was already off the couch.

“Bet a walk would help,” he said with false cheer through gritted teeth, hauling her to her feet from under her arms. “A nice, long walk, outside of the _ very flammable bookshop! _” But Nil wasn’t having it; her legs stubbornly refused to be involved in this mess when her brain was already dealing with this much. So, okay, it would be more of a drag than a walk, then, as Crowley was pulling her backwards through the shop and out the front door, Aziraphale following close behind.

Even now! Even this! Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Nil felt gratitude, of all things! Even with snot and steaming tears running down her face, and her hair engulfed in flame, deep down in some dark, hidden part of her chest, Nil was having _ warm feelings _ about this pair of idiots. She was having a completely humiliating meltdown, nearly literally, and nonetheless, _ they were taking care of her _ and she was _ glad! _ In defiance of all logic, she was _ glad, _ that if she had to embarrass herself like this, it was in front of them, because (_ugh_) they were helpful and accommodating and actively trying to make her feel better, or at least keep her from hurting herself. And she liked it. She liked _ them_.

Disgusting. Unthinkable. Awful. Completely revolting.

No wonder they’d chosen this over their respective sides.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil copes with her feelings (poorly).

Even if she had been firing on all cylinders, Nil probably wouldn’t have recognized where they dragged her to, or paid any attention to how they got there. As it was, she barely even noticed the journey at all. She was fairly sure they hadn’t teleported, but who even knew, at this point? All she knew was that she was no longer inside a bookshop, or on the street outside a bookshop, and she had no awareness of when or how that had happened.

It was somewhere green. Grass, that was it. A park, probably. There was a lake? A pond? She couldn't remember what the distinction was. There was water, anyway. Over the distant-sounding echoes of two incomprehensible English accents trying to get her attention, Nil had what could almost qualify as a thought.

“Water’s big,” she mumbled stupidly, eyes wide. Her hair was on fire. The water was big enough to… yeah, okay.

That was the secret to unlocking the function in her legs again. In a vague, zombie-Godzilla sort of fashion, she trudged forward toward the big water. No, _pond_. Definitely a pond. Ignoring the scattering waterfowl, and the two voices calling out to her more frantically now, Nil clambered directly into the pond without a word. As she waded in past her knees, her mental faculties started to come back to her. _Right._ The try-hard serpent in the sunglasses and the nerdy renegade angel had just somehow exposed all her weaknesses. And they weren’t even exploiting them, the complete _shitheads_. She took a deep breath, threw her head back, and started hollering.

“Should we do something?” she heard Aziraphale ask, from the water’s edge. “Go after her?”

“Eennh, I think she’ll be fine,” Crowley said in a voice so casual Nil knew without looking that he had his hands in his pockets. “She just has to be dramatic about it first.” Nil plunged her flaming head into the water, which of course did nothing to put out the infernal flames, but did send up an impressive cloud of steam.

“Oh, is that a demonic trait then?” Aziraphale said. “I always thought that was just you.”

“A demonic — Did you just say _ I’m _ dramatic? Me? _ You’re _ calling _ me _ dramatic?” Crowley said, dramatically, as Nil’s screaming tapered off into a sustained groan.

“My dear, once we had a fight and your solution was to take an anger nap for seventy-eight years.”

“Seventy-six, I was awake for the last two, just resting my eyes.” The water began to boil around Nil’s flaming head. “And anyway, you’re one to talk about _ dramatic_.”

“What does that mean?”

“Do I have to bring up the Bastille again?”

“That hardly counts.”

Nil flipped her hair back out of the water, and now it was smoldering rather than flaming, which was progress. With another deep breath, she flailed around violently for a bit, sending up huge splashes.

“And what about that time with those cultists?”

“They had such a persecution complex, and I didn’t want to validate their delusions by miracling myself out of it!”

“You were bound and gagged on a sacrificial altar when I got there!”

“It did get a little out of hand, I admit.”

After that, Nil did not hear the rest of their conversation, because she was floating on her back, ears and smoldering hair submerged in the water, staring furiously at passing clouds. 

She wasn’t sure how long she held there, floating: it could have been a few minutes, it could have been an hour or so. Either way, she came back to herself after a while. She couldn’t be entirely sure who “herself” was, after this whole ordeal of learning of the terrible, soft things that had apparently been lurking under her surface, but there she was.

Nil pulled off her glasses and gave them a good shake, to try to clear them of pond water and debris, before putting them back on and wading slowly back onto the shore. Crowley and Aziraphale were sitting on a nearby park bench now, watching patiently.

“Alright, for real,” Nil said, sodden hair in her face, as she slouched over to them. “Cards on the table. Aziraphale. You use angel magic on me?”

“No,” Aziraphale exclaimed, “of course not!” He looked around fretfully, like he was trying to identify what in the park could have made Nil say such a thing. “I don’t think I really have the ability to —”

“Shit,” Nil replied. “Alright then. Crowley. You secretly been some kinda… friendship incubus this whole time?”

“That’s — what? No,” Crowley frowned. “That’s not a thing.” Which Nil knew, obviously, before she had asked the question. 

“So you're really not gonna give me any outs here? I just… what?” She spread her hands in a shrug of surrender. “I gotta care about you people? _ Piss Christ_, I can’t believe this is my life now.”

“Surely it’s not as bad as all that,” Aziraphale offered tentatively.

“Not that bad? _ Not that bad? _” Nil dripped indignantly for a moment. “I’ve just managed to completely wreck millenia of total isolation. That doesn’t sound that bad to you?”

“… No, not really,” Aziraphale said. He looked at Crowley for a lifeline, and Crowley heaved a great big melodramatic sigh.

“Well no, of course you don’t get it, you never shut up about how you’re a _ being of love _ and all that. She’s a demon. This might be…” His lip curled in distaste as he struggled for the words. “We might need a moment alone.”

“Oh. Oh, of course!” Aziraphale wrung his hands, because of course he did. “I’ll just… I’ll be right over there, then, if you need me. Not that I expect… Well.” He stood up and moved aside, offering his vacated spot on the bench to Nil. She took it, sitting down with a loud _ squelch_, and Aziraphale flashed her one more of those almost-nauseatingly hopeful smiles before starting off to give the demons some space, glancing back every few seconds. 

“And don’t eavesdrop,” Crowley called after him.

“I wouldn’t!” Crowley didn’t even say anything, just tilted his head at him. Evidently, that was enough, because Aziraphale’s frown got considerably poutier, and he made a big show of walking off even further.

“So,” Crowley said, once Aziraphale was a reasonable distance away. “‘S a hell of a thing.” He looked straight ahead as he spoke to her. That was a relief; Nil didn’t think she could handle the vulnerability of being looked at while she talked about her _ feelings_, even if he was wearing those dumb sunglasses and could have been taking a micronap for all she knew.

“I’m just… I’m almost ashamed of myself, you know?” Even anything _ like _ shame was an entirely foreign feeling to Nil, a demon who reveled in being a headache-causing nightmare every moment she wasn’t totally imperceptible. “Like, I can’t believe how little it took, to make me totally cave into sentimentality and like, caring, or whatever. All you guys had to do was be kinda nice to me.”

“I mean, _ Aziraphale _ was kinda nice to you, let’s not—”

“No, asshole, you too,” she said, like it was a filthy secret she was bringing to light, and it kind of was.

“No no no, I pulled you out of the bookshop because you were _ on fire _and books are made of paper. I don’t know how much you know about what the place has been through lately, but—”

“Not just that,” she cut him off again. “And for the record, I’m a grown-ass demon and I can hold my fire, I wasn’t gonna burn down the bookshop, okay?” She shook her head. “It wasn’t that. You listened to me bitch about stuff. You_ participated _ in the bitching, like it was a thing we were sharing, _ together. _ I came to you asking for help, and instead of rubbing salt in the wound, you just… helped me. Before you two, I don’t think anybody really _ listened _to me since… ugh, since Lucifer, and even he wasn’t really listening, was he? It was all just kinda jerk-off material.” She paused and squeezed some water out of a lock of her hair. “I’m just blown away that that’s all it took, y’know?”

Crowley said nothing for a moment, and Nil thought that was fair enough. Theirs was not a celestial race of contemplation or emotional honesty. But then, with great, visible effort, he spoke up without turning his face toward her.

“He sheltered me from the rain.”

“What?” Nil looked up, sure she’d either heard wrong or maybe blacked out for a minute and was now in a conversation she didn’t remember starting.

“In Eden, when Aziraphale and I met, it was right before the first rain. And he lifted up his wing and let me scoot underneath.” Nil opened her mouth to reply, but found that all she could do was draw in an awed breath.

“Oh, man,” she whispered, when she could make words again. “And that was it, huh?”

“That was it.”

Nil drew a circle on the ground with her toe.

“Fuck, man, they really snowed us, huh?” All of Heaven’s sterile tranquility; all of Hell’s insistence that familiarity breeds contempt, and _ yet _ . Crowley still didn’t look at her, just nodded wordlessly. This seemed like a smoke-'em-if-you-got-'em moment if ever Nil had seen one, so she pulled her ugly vape pen from a jeans pocket it couldn't possibly have fit into. She stared off into the middle distance between long, artificially-fruity drags, reflecting on how far she’d fallen. Or, how far she apparently hadn’t fallen, she guessed. _ Here we are_, she thought, _ the embarrassment of Hell. _

“What’s that one supposed to be,” Crowley said after a few moments. Nil looked at her vape stick like it would tell her.

“Tropical Paradise, I think? Some crap like that.” She shrugged. “You want a hit?”

“Might as well,” he said, taking the thing from her outstretched hand. He took one long, practiced pull, reminding Nil exactly why anyone had ever thought any of this looked cool. It really was an impressive performance, his too-cool former-rock-star thing. He exhaled serenely, and then handed the pen back to her. “That is awful. One of the worst things I’ve ever put in my mouth.”

“Oof, that’s saying something,” Nil said wryly, taking back her fruit garbage vapor wand. 

“Bright side is,” Crowley continued, with a half-shrug, finally turning his head just enough to actually look at her, “probably took your mind off that whole confusing good-and-evil thing.” She started chuckling despite herself.

“Screw you,” she laughed up at him. “Why would you remind me about that, you ass, we’re supposed to be colleagues.”

“They can cast the demon out of Hell,” he replied, looking altogether way too proud of himself.

“I don't know, a week ago I woulda been pretty sure that ‘moment alone’ thing was some kinda ruse to kill me off.”

“You still should, you're too trusting.”

“That’s good advice,” she smirked mercilessly, “_thaaank you_, Crowley.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “It's _ ever _ so nice of you.”

“Eugh. Well, since you clearly value my input so much.”

“Ugh, ew. I played myself there, huh?”

“Yep.” And they were _ smiling _ at each other, not smirking or sneering or simpering, but authentically _ smiling _, and wasn't that a surprise? Aziraphale had been right: it really wasn't so bad.

“I really enjoyed that cup of tea,” she admitted after a moment. “Was nice.” She didn’t usually go in for that sort of thing, but something did feel special about the tea. Which was logically absurd; any idiot could competently combine hot water and a bag of leaves, there wasn’t much advanced technique to it. (She was abso-freaking-lutely not about to say that out loud in this country, though. She knew how these people got about their hot leaf water.) Probably, she thought, with a twinge of hatred, it was the fact that Aziraphale had made it_ for her_, to help her feel better. The secret ingredient really was love. Gross. “D’you think Aziraphale’d make me another one?”

“Not like that,” Crowley said, giving her a once-over. “You’re sopping wet and covered in algae and bird shit.”

“Oh, yeah,” Nil said, examining a lock of her hair. She stood up from the bench and shook her whole body, like a two-legged dog, purging all the pond water and detritus. “Am I better now?” she said, fully dry and holding out her arms.

“No good,” Crowley said. “Still an insufferable nuisance.”

“Fuck off,” she said with a laugh. “I’m gonna go tell Aziraphale you’re being mean to me.” Crowley rose from the bench too, and they went together to fetch the angel who was definitely not trying to figure out what they’d been saying, and adjourn back to the bookshop.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil stops by the bookshop for a visit and tries do so some convincing.

For as long as she could remember, at least since the Fall, Nil had felt it. An empty, tragic feeling ever-present in the back of her head. It wasn’t quite jealousy or resentment, and yet it was. It was a dull ache, a blue-tinged thought that she had things to say but no one who would hear them. A deep, dark pit in which she was always metaphorically sitting, alone and quiet. And for all that time, Nil had assumed that it was simply a standard-issue part of being a demon; the consequences of being removed from God’s love. It wasn’t fun by any means, but she could deal with it. She hated it less than she hated the boiling sulfur, at least.

But as she got to know Crowley and Aziraphale, and as they were both aware of but not actively repulsed by her presence, they had pulled another trick that amazed and baffled her. She’d felt something strange, and, at first, hard to place: the_ lack _ of that blue-tinged dark-pit feeling. It wasn’t her demonic nature, an implacable default state; it was a thing that could be banished from her. And all that was required was, apparently, a couple of doofuses inviting her to watch them have long, animated discussions about absolutely goddamn nothing of consequence while they knocked back some wine. (Nil hadn’t even had that much to drink, which was insane: she usually embraced her lack of human limitations and opted to get completely obliterated. This time, she hadn’t felt the need to go beyond pleasantly buzzed, which had the bonus of allowing her to actually remember the evening.)

After a lot of thought and some anonymous online discussions, Nil came to the conclusion that what she had assumed for millenia was just one of the punishments for rejecting God was, in fact, what the humans knew as _ loneliness_. It was not a unique experience at all. And it pissed her off a little bit, that it had taken her so long to catch on. The humans had been making art and writing sad words about being lonely since almost the beginning; Nil couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed the similarities sooner. Also, she was a little put-out that she was not actually dealing with some special torment unendurable by mere mortals. Mere mortals were, in fact, so used to this problem that they had basically _ invented new animals _ to combat it, for Hell’s sake.

And maybe, in a few decades or so, Nil would feel comfortable taking the leap into pet ownership. But hellhounds, no matter how adorably they drooled and snarled, were a lot of work and presumably required a lot of devotion and attention, and right now, it was all Nil could do to figure out the basics of this friendship thing. She thought she was starting to get the hang of hanging out, but more practice couldn’t hurt.

The little tinkle of the bell above the bookshop door was followed, almost instantaneously, by a seemingly-Pavlovian call of “Sorry, we’re closed,” from somewhere Nil couldn’t currently see.

“It’s just me,” she called out, looking around for Aziraphale. Nil was beginning to get the sense that she might have been the only repeat customer who had ever been _ welcome _ at A. Z. Fell & Co., and she put that down to the fact that she never had any intentions of actually buying anything and had said so from the start.

“Oh, come in, then,” Aziraphale called from whatever hidden corner he was in, which Nil immediately started walking around to try and find. “I’ll be right with you, I’m just finishing up some work.” This made Nil do a double-take.

“Work?” she repeated, skeptical, as she peered around shelves. “What work could you possibly have? I was kinda under the impression this place never actually opened.”

“Well, needs must,” Aziraphale said, sounding borderline regretful about it. “But I’ve just been doing a spot of book repair, actually.” She followed his voice past another shelf. “Need to keep the merchandise in tip-top — oh, there you are! Hello, Nil.” Nil waved dutifully before she fully took in the scene before her.

It was a whole tableau. Aziraphale was turned around in his seat at an antique desk, cluttered with old books and things that Nil assumed would be classified as _ miscellanea _ or _ sundries _ or maybe even _ ephemera_, rather than _ stuff, junk,_ or _ crap, _ which would be her go-to terms. He was wearing round glasses, white cotton gloves, and a cardigan instead of his usual jacket, which was the first indication Nil had ever seen that Aziraphale was even aware his appearance was in any way customizable. It was so freaking _ darling, _ Nil could hardly stand it. She was going to have to start so many inane internet fights to make up for this.

“What's with the specs?” Nil asked, tapping the temple of her own glasses with a fingernail. “You can't need 'em.”

“Ah, well.” The question seemed to fluster him more than a question about reading glasses should. “It’s important to maintain one’s image, and this sort of… fiddly work can cause terrible eye strain on humans, of course, and so it stands to reason —”

“You know that if it's just that you like 'em, you can say so, right? Like, I get it.” Aesthetics were important, for celestial beings among humans, and cultivating an individual sense for them really helped. She suspected Heaven might have pretended that wasn’t true, though; that appearances were shallow and pointless. Which was pretty friggin’ rich, after the whole Baroque movement. “‘S why I have this gap in my teeth.” She fake-smiled, to show off the aforementioned gap between her two front teeth, which she had gone with only because it put her in mind of a scrappy street urchin or something, and not for any practical reason.

“Oh.” He began pulling off his gloves. “Then yes, I just like them.”

“And you should,” Nil grinned. “It's a good look for you.”

“Thank you,” he replied, with another one of those smiles that could probably cause a sunburn. Nil winced and clenched a fist, swallowing the desire to shout at him to _ knock it off, she was just a beginner, this wasn’t fair_. Instead, she distracted herself by looking at what he’d been doing when she came in. Among the various mystery items of unclear purpose on the desk, she spotted a tool she actually recognized. 

“Oh man, is that a bone folder? It’s been ages since I saw one of those.”

“You’re familiar?”

“Oh, yeah, from back when I used to work in tortures, in the Malebolge.” 

“Tortures,” Aziraphale repeated. His smile didn’t exactly falter as much as freeze, and all the light drained from it at once.

“It was a lousy fit. Like, I’m really good at petty annoyances and minor torments, but I’m not cut out for the stronger stuff. Plenty of sadistic fucks down there with a real _ passion _ for the work, so I was replaced pretty quick.” Here, of course, she meant “pretty quick” on a time scale comprehensible only by other creatures who had existed since before existence, and had then dealt with a bureaucracy run by the same. “I forget how it came up, but somehow, someone down there heard the phrase ‘bone folder’ and the whole department just went nuts. Some kinda contraption that _ folds bones? _ Woulda been a game changer.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Yeah, lotta disappointed demons the day we figured out what it actually meant.” Still, she did have to admire that the humans were making bookbinding tools out of bones, that was pretty cool. “So where’s Crowley, anyway?”

“He doesn’t actually live here, you know,” Aziraphale said, rising from the chair to start putting away some of the odds and ends Nil couldn’t identify on the desk. 

“Seriously? Coulda fooled me.” Personally, Nil wasn’t one for long-term residence anywhere, but she could see how it’d be easy to get comfortable here.

“No, of course not,” replied Aziraphale, putting the bone folder and some of the other stuff into a desk drawer, “he has a flat in Mayfair.” 

“That’s real? I thought that was a red herring.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s never there!” Nil shrugged dramatically. “I was lurking outside what Hell’s records have listed as his Earthly address for days before I showed up here. Finally I just tracked his car down. Figured the apartment was just to throw the bosses off.” Aziraphale actually _ blushed_. Had he really not noticed that Crowley might as well have lived there, from Nil’s perspective? Or, Hell, from _ anyone’s _ perspective? Even after the pond incident, when Aziraphale had started obliquely hinting about _ late hours _ like they needed sleep, Crowley had stayed firmly put while he bluntly informed Nil that Aziraphale was too polite to straight-up tell her to leave, but that it was definitely time for her to get out.

“Well, no, I suppose he hasn’t been much of a homebody of late, has he?” The cagey bashfulness was weird. Not scary weird, or suspicious weird, maybe, but weird. Aziraphale met her gaze again, still looking sheepish. “He mostly goes back to tend his houseplants.”

“Oh yeah, you mentioned the plants! That’s right.” She recalled their meal out together, where Aziraphale had gushed about the greenery and Crowley had indulged in what Nil was privately thinking of as _ kvetchbragging_. “That’s actually cute as shit, that he gardens. Don’t tell him I said that, though.” 

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Aziraphale smiled.

“He seems like he'd be a real bastard about taking a compliment.”

“Oh, you've no idea.” Aziraphale paused to roll his eyes and tut about it, like he’d been waiting for an opportunity to do this all day. “You should have seen the overreaction I got for saying he was _ nice _ not long ago. Completely disproportionate.” 

“Oof, _ nice,_” Nil grinned. “I mean, it’s kinda true, but you’re not supposed to say it.”

“At any rate, your timing was impeccable, dear. Crowley phoned not five minutes before you came in to let me know he was on his way over.” Nil raised an eyebrow, but chose not to say out loud that this was only proving her point, about the whole Crowley-might-as-well-just-live-here thing. She could have, very easily, and maybe if she was having this discussion with Crowley instead, she would have, but she didn’t want to risk alienating Aziraphale over pointless jackassery. So, instead, she just mentally filed that nugget away for another time.

“That’s dope,” Nil said. “I actually wanted to talk to you guys about something specific, so that works out. I can just sit tight until he gets here.” She sank onto the ridiculously comfortable sofa next to the desk. “Though shootin’ the shit with you would probably be a fine way to spend the afternoon too,” she added, gesturing at him. Aziraphale finished up his tidying (Nil supposed, at least, because the desk was still a cluttered mess) and then looked at her thoughtfully.

“Nil,” he said, “would _ you _ be terribly offended if I said you were nice?” Nil’s eyebrows jumped: that had never been a concern she’d had. She considered it carefully for about three seconds.

“You know what? I’m actually fine with that.” It was a surprise even to her, really, how much she brightened at the thought. “It’s totally cool if _ you _ say I’m nice. I _ want _ to be nice to _ you_.” Aziraphale’s expression did a wibbly kind of thing.

“Why,_ Nil,_” he said. “That’s completely lovely.” And then he beamed at her like a godblessed sunlamp. This time, Nil couldn't stop herself.

“Dude, you gotta calm down with that, it's too much for me,” she said, burying her face in her hands. “I appreciate you being such a sweetheart but _ goddamn _, I feel like I'm gonna have to go kick puppies to restore my equilibrium here, and I really don't wanna kick puppies.” Sure, Nil was marginally evil, but she did have some kind of standards, and puppies just didn’t have it coming the way humans did.

“Oh dear, well, we certainly wouldn’t want that, now would we?” Which was maybe a weird reaction for an angel to have to a demon complaining that she might have to go be violent to innocent creatures to feel normal again, but then there probably wasn’t any precedent for that sort of thing, so all the possibilities would have been weird. “Is there something else that might make you feel better? Er, _ worse? _ … More yourself.” Ugh. It was like he was incapable of stopping.

“Don’t sweat the nomenclature, I don’t actually know the rules about that,” she said, waving a hand. Not bothering to learn the rules of the Infernal style guide felt considerably more rebellious and demonic, Nil thought, than memorizing them and sticking to them strictly. She certainly blasphemed enough, anyway. “I just… I dunno what to do with all this kindness. I feel like I gotta channel it into being an obnoxious nightmare beast somehow.”

“Hmm.” Aziraphale tapped his chin a few times, looking like he was actually considering this as, like, a real problem that he cared about solving. “I have a record player that can get rather loud, if you’d like? Would that help?” Nil’s mouth fell open. _ Would that help? _What kind of response was that? But she had to admit, blasting music in a place that seemed designed for peace and quiet _ was _ one of her old stand-bys.

Nil liked records, actually, in one of those nonsensical human-y ways. She wasn’t one of those too-cool “audiophile” douches who insisted everything sounded better on vinyl when that was demonstrably false: Nil knew all the advances in recording technology had been made for good reason. (And modern artists often didn’t know how to mix for vinyl anyways, and Nil would tell Kanye West as much to his face.) But there was something oddly satisfying about a record as an object. The big, black disc, inscribed with mysterious grooves, like some carved artifact from a forgotten civilization. Only, instead of divining arcane knowledge or summoning one of her coworkers, this artifact made the music of the Rolling Stones manifest in your house.

Well, okay, not the Stones, in this case. Aziraphale’s record collection was, probably predictably, completely devoid of rock and roll. Actually, short of a few original cast recordings of some stage musicals, it was mostly devoid of anything that had been composed since the start of the twentieth century. Nil flicked through a selection of classical recordings with dishwater-dull cover art, mostly. There was only so much obnoxiousness Nil could manage to the sounds of Mozart, _ “Leck mich im Arsch” _ notwithstanding. And while the presence of the _ Sweeney Todd _OCR was an unexpected delight she definitely planned on coming back to, she just wasn’t feeling the Broadway diva fantasy today. Too many overlapping vocal parts.

“How’s about a compromise,” Nil suggested to Aziraphale, conjuring a new record out of nothing in her hands to show him. “I promise it’s a real music album, not just, like, a disc of chainsaw sounds and dogs barking.” Which was the sort of thing that spent a long time at the top of Hell’s Hot 100 Charts. “It’s one of my favorites, check it out.”

* * *

“Angel, I brought —” Crowley’s opening remark, however, immediately derailed into an exhausted, “oh, what_ now._” Because Nil was weaving among the bookshelves again, eyes closed and arms waving melodramatically, as she keened to the lyrics at the top of her lungs.

_ “Oh, thunder only happens when it’s raaaain-iiing!” _ She twirled around the chair Aziraphale was parked in now. _ “Players! Only love you when they’re plaaaay-iiin’!” _

“Hullo, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, as though none of this were occurring. “Nil’s come to visit.”

“Really,” Crowley replied. “Hadn’t noticed. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary here.”

_ “When the rain wash-eeesss you clean you’ll kno-ow!” _

“I’m assuming the Fleetwood Mac is your doing,” Crowley said, as Nil draped herself over an accent table, lost her balance, toppled head-over-heels, and then got up and continued swaying like nothing had happened.

“I thought Aziraphale might like it!” She grinned and wiggled her arms as she said so, as though that would sell it better.

“What on Earth made you think _ Aziraphale _ would enjoy an album that’s entirely fueled by cocaine and marital infidelity?” Which elicited a small, surprised _ “oh!” _from Aziraphale, but nothing that indicated he was too hugely scandalized, presumably because he had known a musician or two in six thousand years.

“Uh, gee, I dunno, Crowley,” she said, not pausing in her off-time undulating to Stevie Nicks’ vocals, “what _ ever _ could have made me think that someone of refinement and impeccable taste might enjoy one of the most solid albums of the twentieth century?”

“There’s your problem,” Crowley said, silencing the music with a gesture.

“Every track on _ Rumors _ slaps and you know it!” Sure, knowing these two had been nothing but a series of her expectations being totally demolished, but one had to draw a line against complete absurdity somewhere. Nil was absolutely not about to let someone _ dressed like that _ get away with arguing _ against _ the merits of Fleetwood Mac’s best album.

“Not that, the twentieth century.” Crowley swung the shopping bag he was holding out onto the accent table Nil had fallen over. “D’you see his collection? Not heavy on anything under a century old.”

“I thought I could help him out!” Nil shrugged. “Figured it was safest to start him out on something easy.” Something favored by wine aunts and cool dads. Led Zeppelin was right out as a starter, and Marvin Gaye was too sexy for a beginner, and the Beatles really required carving out a whole weekend, and she was waffling on the Rolling Stones at all, given _ Their Satanic Majesties Request _ and “Sympathy for the Devil,” which it was now occurring to Nil was probably one of Crowley’s. She could just picture him sauntering up to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at some party, introducing himself as _ “a man of wealth and taste,” _ the tacky bastard. But of course, _ Lucifer _ was the name that got dropped in the last verse, because Satan (literally) forbid anybody else in Hell ever get credit for anything. Which reminded her about what she had actually come here to discuss, so she dropped the music thing.

“What’s this,” Aziraphale asked, already digging into the bag Crowley had presented to find out.

“It’s éclairs,” Crowley answered.

“Oh, thank you, dear,” Aziraphale said, opening the box of pastries inside and immediately starting in on one. Nil couldn’t restrain a giggle. 

“What?” Crowley glowered at her.

“Nothin’,” Nil said, as innocently as possible, trying her best to manifest a halo she no longer had.

“No, don’t _ nothin’ _ me, what’s so funny?”

“No, it’s just…” She looked away, and then returned with a sidelong glance and a failed attempt to repress her shit-eating grin. “It’s just really _ sweet _ of you.”

“Shut up,” Crowley groaned. Nil plunged into another fit of giggles.

“You shouldn’t bait him, Nil,” Aziraphale said between bites of éclair.

“He brought you_ éclairs_, that’s fuckin’ precious,” Nil protested. “If he’s gonna tee ‘em up for me like that, what am I supposed to do?”

“That _ was _ quite thoughtful of you,” Aziraphale admitted to Crowley, and then went back for another bite.

“Ngyeh,” Crowley said eloquently, waving a dismissive hand and arranging himself into an armchair in a way that could be termed “sitting,” if one were being generous. Nil rearranged some of the stacks of books that covered every surface so that she could scoot the box of eclairs over enough to perch her butt on the accent table. Aziraphale frowned.

“The both of you, really. Does spending a prolonged amount of time in Hell give one an allergy to properly sitting in a chair?”

“Hadn’t ever put that much thought into it, to be honest. Always kind of figured it might be a serpent thing, though that wouldn’t explain her.” Crowley looked Nil over. “You’ve always had all those limbs, haven’t you?” 

“Oh yeah,” Nil answered, “two arms, two legs, fresh out the box.”

“Maybe it’s a subconscious… anti-authority thing,” Crowley suggested with a shrug.

“Fuck the Man; can’t be tamed,” Nil said, swinging her feet back and forth for emphasis. Aziraphale huffed a long-suffering sigh.

“Just please be careful not to squash the éclairs, if you insist on sitting on the table,” he said to Nil, in a tone like he was conceding some great battle.

“You got it, dude,” Nil said, with a roguish wink and a thumbs up. “Anyways, speaking of fuck the Man, I kinda had a thing I wanted to talk to you guys about.”

“Is it a stupid, hypothetical thing?” Crowley looked more pleased by the prospect of debating dumb hypotheticals than he probably thought he was letting on.

“No, like a real thing,” Nil insisted. She paused and took a deep breath, shifting into Serious Discussion Mode. “I think you guys have a lot of untapped potential you’re just kinda sitting on.” 

They did not ask _ “what” _ at the same time, because of course they wouldn’t have the rhythm for that. But they did both ask _ “what” _ within a split-second of each other. Aziraphale, at least, had the decency to look puzzled; Crowley straight-up _ laughed. _ (Okay, that was fair, the phrase “untapped potential” was kind of unbearable.)

“No, seriously! Do you two even realize what you actually did? Like, big-picture-wise?” She leaned forward, like being physically closer by a few inches would make the words she was saying land better. “Humans have options. We never have. Not once, since the beginning. There was just angels in Heaven, and then there was the Rebellion, and then there were demons in Hell, and those were the only options on the table for any of us. Literally, black and white. But somehow, through sheer… _ whatever_, you two forced a third option out of the situation. Our respective bosses are quick to paper over it, but that’s… that’s more than rebellion, that’s _ revolutionary_. You guys know that, right?” And it was fine with Nil that they looked so uncomfortable at this, that they exchanged nervous-looking glances, it was _ fine, _ because change was never comfortable.

“I think you’re making rather more of this than it really is, Nil, dear,” Aziraphale said, looking sympathetic, like he was maybe pitying her naivety, a little, but his hands twisting in his lap were a dead giveaway.

“Yeah, we just got lucky, really,” Crowley said, but he, too, was too stiff in his lounging now for Nil to buy it. “A lot of coincidences, there was a dead witch involved… ”

“But that’s all it takes! You opened the door just a fraction of an inch! You… you friggin’…” She groped for a metaphor that she could be reasonably sure they’d relate to. “You cracked the shell on the crème brûlée, or whatever! Now there’s proof that it’s possible!” 

And at this point, she didn’t want to play the game anymore: she fell selectively deaf to Crowley’s pretenses at not knowing what the hell she was talking about, at Aziraphale’s well-meaning obfuscations. This was too important for that shit. Nil set her jaw, grasped her knees tight, and straightened up out of her slouch. 

“I want in,” she said, suddenly, decisively.

“The Heaven d'you mean, you want _ in? _ ” Crowley sneered. “In on _ what? _”

“Our side,” Aziraphale said softly. Crowley glared at him.

“Don't. Don't do that.”

“That’s it, exactly!” Nil beamed, clapping her hands. “You created a whole new side! I wanna join Team Kiss-Our-Asses!”

“Well, we certainly wouldn’t call it _ that,_” Aziraphale muttered.

“You did what the rebellion should have accomplished in the first damn place,” she continued, gesturing and knocking her elbow against a stack of books behind her with a wince. “This is why I broke away! I never wanted… whatever the hell the propaganda says we were after, I just wanted options! You guys could start a whole new movement!”

“Do we look like we’re interested in a _ movement?_” And, point to Crowley, he didn’t seem like he was going to be all that interested in any movement that took him out of his chair any time soon, let alone a movement against Heaven and/or Hell. It might be hard, Nil recognized, to recruit leaders for a cause whose main goal was to be left alone in peace to do whatever. Especially once they’d actually accomplished it. But.

“But it has to be you!” She hated the pleading note that had crept into her voice.

“Why?” Crowley said. “You’re so keen, you do it!”

“You’re the only ones they can’t actually touch!” Was that somehow not obvious to them? Did Nil have to explain everything? “What do you think is gonna happen for me, if I go find Himself and tell him I’m putting in my two-weeks notice? You think I’ll get a card that says ‘good luck, we’ll miss you’ and a nice severance package?” Well, she imagined _ severance _ would probably be a part of whatever would happen next, anyway. Sever_ing _, at least.

“So, what, you want us to act as your_ union representatives? _” He held the sibilants a little longer than was really necessary, and Nil couldn’t tell if that was a hissy serpent thing, or a derision thing, or a little of both. “We don’t have that kind of leverage, it’s just the two of us.”

“But it could be so much more!” She squeezed her palms against her temples, and added, “Maybe if you’d take off those damn sunglasses once in a while, you’d _ see _ that!”

It did not escape Nil’s notice that she was mainly arguing with Crowley here, and that Aziraphale had been oddly quiet for a while. Not that it was odd for him to be quieter than the two incredibly opinionated demons in the room, but that there was an odd air about it. Like he was still deciding what he wanted to say, because he definitely wanted to say something. Nobody wore that kind of fretful expression without wanting to say something.

“Crowley,” he said, and his voice was calm and thoughtful, despite the look on his face, “do you remember what you said, after our trials? About… about the_ really big one? _ ” Crowley stiffened and sat up, and Nil knew she was imagining the sound of rattling in the distance, because he wasn’t that kind of snake, but the impression was pretty strong anyway. “If your… _ speculation _ should come to pass, it might behoove us not to alienate any potential help.”

“What speculation?” Nil looked rapidly back and forth between them, her own hair hitting her in the face. “What really big one? What are you talking about?”

“Crowley thinks that… well.” Aziraphale looked at Crowley, in a way that felt very significant. Crowley went on a whole face-journey of surprise-resignation-anger-apathy or something similar. It was kind of starting to drive Nil up the wall how much they said to each other without saying anything.

“What I _ said _ was,” Crowley began, like he had been press-ganged into it, “the really big one, bigger than Armageddon — and there’s no knowing if or when it’ll happen, mind, might not even — is most likely going to be Heaven and Hell versus humanity.”

“All of Us, against all of Them,” Aziraphale murmured. And then Nil’s mind immediately set to whirling. Firstly, she thought, Crowley was out of his damn mind. He _ was _ one of those cracked-out conspiracy-prone demons who, had he not been the defector in question, would have been throwing wild theories at the wall about Rising sleeper agents and all that garbage after the bathtub thing. But then, she thought, that bathtub thing _ had _ featured a special guest appearance by the Archangel Michael, who seemed to have zero qualms about working with Hell to eliminate a common enemy beyond the possibility of Hell’s filth staining that frilly white blouse. At the same time, Heaven had wanted Hellfire and Hell obligingly sent an agent who they knew would never shut up about it. And for all Crowley’s faults and shortcomings, he was _ damn _ skilled at anticipating what the bosses were thinking. That was how he’d managed to avoid getting upbraided too severely for so long. 

So maybe it wasn’t him who was crazy. Or, what was that thing humans said? _‘Crazy like a fox?’_

Crazy like a serpent, maybe.

And here was Aziraphale, saying that it might be best not to alienate Nil, in the face of that possibility. 

Right. _ Us _ and _ Them _ meant something different, now, to the two of them. This was what they’d really rejected. They had chosen humanity. And the odds might not be in humanity’s favor.

All told, it was maybe about four seconds of Nil sitting, open-mouthed, eyes rapidly flicking from one nothing to another as she put these thoughts together, but from inside Nil’s head, it felt a lot more monumental.

“Fuck,” she whispered. 

“So, you see,” Aziraphale said, “it might be wise to think carefully about —”

“No, I’ll do it,” Nil said, not realizing she was saying it until the words were out of her mouth. That was apparently not what Aziraphale expected to hear next at all.

“You — _ what? _” 

“Can’t Fall any further!” She threw her hands into the air. “I got no loyalty to Hell! And definitely not to Heaven, screw ‘em both!” Really, she probably should have thought about throwing her lot in with the humans sooner. Humans had, after all, been the ones who had invented cool jackets and vinyl records and memes about frogs doing stuff frogs don’t normally do. (Which she’d really thought Hastur would appreciate more than he actually had, the philistine.) What was the last thing Heaven or Hell had created that Nil liked?

“Now look what you’ve done,” Crowley groaned to Aziraphale as Nil leapt to her feet off the accent table. 

“Do we have any plans in place?” She ignored Crowley’s griping, as was by now routine, and bounced excitedly on the balls of her feet. “What should I do?”

“See, angel,” Crowley said, giving as good as he got on the ignoring front, “you can’t scare off her kind with threats of consequences!”

“I do wish you would stop talking like she’s an entirely different kind of animal from you.”

“I don’t mean demons, I mean _ revolutionaries! _”

“Damn straight,” Nil said, puffing out her chest with a proud little grin. “I’m incorrigible!” 

“Now, now, we shouldn’t discourage her enthusiasm, even if it is a little misplaced,” Aziraphale said. “We might end up needing her help.”

“Oh, great, yeah, the secret weapon, _ Nil_, who by her own admission specializes entirely in low-level chaos and trivial fuckery; what an asset against Michael’s spear and that thing Beelzebub does with the flies in your mouth!” Crowley waved a hand at her, as if displaying her to someone else. “Watch out, combined celestial forces, this one can _ muck up elections! _Whatever will we do without her?” Nil’s shoulders went up around her ears.

“_Crowley,_” Aziraphale said, sharply, and Nil couldn’t help being reminded of that couple in the restaurant whose table she had indirectly set on fire, one of them saying to the other, in the aftermath, _“we are in public” _and _“you always do this.” _ Crowley however, unlike the human in the restaurant, relented quickly.

“Alright, that was too far,” he admitted. “It’s just…” He ran his hand up his face, under his shades, looking more exhausted than Nil might have expected. “Not that it’s not appreciated, but _ Christ_, Nil. This isn’t… whatever it is you’re hoping it is.” His face-mushing had pushed his glasses up onto his forehead, so he actually met her eyes when he spoke again. “There are things to be afraid of besides hellfire and holy water.”

Nil felt strangely unsteady on her feet.

“I’m sorry, dear,” Aziraphale said, and he had the absolute gall to sound like he really was sorry, “but surely, you must realize by now that we’d rather avoid a fight than start one.” 

That was the thing about avoiding interpersonal relationships for all of existence. It had been a long time since Nil had felt this way. _ Betrayed. _ Let down. Another feeling that, prior to now, Nil had thought to be divine punishment: the same feeling she'd had when she Fell and realized that the promise of Lucifer's Glorious Revolution had been totally empty, her hopes vaporized in a wave of brimstone.

It had been so long since Nil had felt _ hopeful _ about anything.

But at least, she thought, they had told her up front, instead of making promises they knew they couldn’t keep. They were honest with her. It felt kind of weird, to be angry, but not enough to want to spit acid and scream “fuck everything” and burn the whole thing down and salt the ashes. Friendship was such bullshit; Nil couldn’t even just be regular-angry anymore without bizarre undertones of gratefulness.

“You guys are better at this than me,” she said, not looking either of them in the eyes, “so help me out here: I’m very upset, and I don’t want to be here with you anymore right now.”

“Understandable,” Aziraphale said, in a tone of voice that said he wished he didn’t understand it.

“But like… I think I still want to be friends? Is that normal?” She risked glancing up.

“Yeah,” Crowley answered with a lip-quirk thing that couldn’t properly be called a smile or a smirk, but Nil couldn’t think of what word might fit better. “‘S totally normal.”

“Alright,” Nil said, fidgeting. “Well… you can hang on to that album, if you want. Maybe give it a listen. The first track on the B-side goes so hard, seriously, you’ll really be doing yourself a favor.” She took a deep breath and looked at them one last time before adding, “Okay. I’m storming out now.” 

And then, because it was excellent storming out music, Nil jammed her earbuds into her ears and played the track in question as she flounced through the bookshop door and stalked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The phrase "Infernal style guide" was shamelessly lifted from [Kaesa's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesa/pseuds/Kaesa) delightful [all devoured, feet and hands](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21263033), and the song to which Nil storms out is timeless jam "The Chain," which really is excellent storming out music.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil comes up with a bright idea.

So Nil sat on that for a while. Overthinking the discussion too soon afterward just made her upset again, and brought her no clarity anyway, so instead she tried to take her mind off it and let the post-argument thoughts come to her in their own time.

Luckily, this wasn’t too hard: a big, bustling metropolis like London always provided plenty of opportunities to throw herself into her work by being a total shithead, which let a few days turn into a week or so much more quickly. She hadn't been back to Europe in so long that she was, at this point, effectively indistinguishable from an actual American tourist, so she decided to leverage that to her advantage. Googling "annoying things American tourists do in London" gave her a neat little to-do list that she topped off by pitching a nice, soothing, enormous screaming tantrum over nothing with some souvenir hawker right outside Buckingham Palace. Her mind cleared nicely by that, she set out for the closest McDonald's she could find, intending to start an overly-boisterous conversation about the weather with some overworked stranger, when her phone buzzed. The text was from someone she had saved into her contacts as just a pair of emojis: the smug sunglasses one, and the snake.

_ “Angel's worried about you. You alive?” _

Nil's response was a deep-fried jpeg of Kermit the Frog and Pepe the Prawn, with text across the top border reading _ "I'ma keep it real with u chief!!" _ And across the bottom, something else that had been very poorly edited out and replaced with the words _ "bottom text". _She also spent a while looking closely at the snake emoji, and determined that it was way too cute to be associated with Crowley in her phone, and she resolved to replace it later. After a Big Mac and a few questions about when Big Ben would bong.

She had arrived at one of her least favorite conclusions: Neither side in that argument had been entirely right or entirely wrong. So nobody was going to get to gloat about it and lord it over anyone else’s head, unfortunately.

Because Nil still thought she was right about a lot of what she had said, and this time it wasn't even just out of stubborn contrariness. The fact that Aziraphale and Crowley had, metaphorically speaking, joined hands and looked at the establishment and said, _ “no, we won't let this happen, we're out,” _ and it had _ actually worked _ was a big fucking deal. And Nil suspected they knew that, and maybe they were scared, that Heaven or Hell or both would realize it too, and come and try to rectify it to save face. So they downplayed it, to hold on to their newfound freedom. Which Nil could, begrudgingly, totally understand. Fear of reprisal was, somewhat literally, one Hell of a thing. But still, it had happened, which meant it was possible, and sooner or later, someone besides Nil would figure that out and want to get out too. Crowley and Aziraphale were going to be icons whether they wanted to or not.

And, having had some time and distance to think about it, Nil realized that kind of sucked. They had, after all, stopped the damn apocalypse. Wasn't that enough? It was pretty frickin' unfair, that the thing that had earned them some peace and quiet was exactly the thing that would send more disillusioned idiots like Nil to their door, but that was the way it was. Denying and deemphasizing wasn't going to stop it.

It was some time later that Nil received another text.

_ “Despite the three hours I've just spent trying to explain memes to Aziraphale, he thinks you're in trouble and that was some kind of coded message. Send something less incomprehensible.” _ Nil was privately impressed with what must have been the robustness and good training of Crowley's autocorrect. Full capitalization and correct spelling on both “incomprehensible” and “Aziraphale?” He had that thing whipped.

_ “tell him to watch this” _ And then, Nil sent a YouTube link.

_ “If that's a rickroll I’ll discorporate you” _

_ “Its not a rickroll.” _ It was, in fact, a link to the Lemon Demon song “Two Trucks.” Nil couldn't suppress a grin at the thought of Aziraphale and Crowley reacting to the lyrics “_two trucks having sex / my muscles, my muscles / involuntarily flex_” in real time. A response came two minutes later.

_ “new twist on an old classic. You're awful” _ Nil snorted at her phone before typing out a response.

_ “Wasn’t a rickroll tho,” _ she replied, followed by another message reading, _ “fr tho im fine, just thinking about stuff.” _

The thing was, Crowley had been right about some stuff too. No successful revolution had ever been started, finished, and entirely fought by three people. No amount of hellfire and holy water immunity was going to stop them from being entirely, ridiculously outnumbered and outgunned. Especially if Crowley's prediction was right and both sides joined forces against a common enemy. So, you know, there was that.

Also a point, no matter how poorly it had been made: if it did come down to a huge battle royale of all of Us against all of Them, Nil's defection or lack thereof wasn't exactly going to be the clincher. Nil was not much of a warrior. Scrappier than she might look, sure, and full of a deep well of inexhaustible pissiness and tenacity, but she wasn’t much with a sword. Or _ against _ a sword. Or a spear. Or a pitchfork. Or body cavities full of writhing insects. Her skills were elsewhere, and she was proud of them, damn it, even if they weren’t the most glorious. 

Which was what led her to where she had settled, mentally, on all this. Nil sucked at swordplay and rousing speeches and battle plans. What Nil _ didn’t _ suck at, what Nil had always kind of ruled at, was not being noticed, paying close and quiet attention, and waiting for the right moment to make the decisive move.

Nil could _ kick ass _ at subterfuge and sedition.

* * *

It was absolutely, positively ri-goddamn-diculous to be this nervous walking up to the bookshop door. Nil had long since established she wasn't in any danger there. She should have been totally comfortable waltzing in like she owned the place. But then she'd accidentally picked a fight with the first two creatures in existence whose company she actually wanted to keep, and the thought that she might screw the whole thing up was almost as nerve-wracking as her initial fear of the mysterious angel who ran the store.

(She was really trying not to be hard on herself for that one, in hindsight. How could she possibly have known what a muffin Aziraphale was going to turn out to be? He had clearly intimidated the ever-loving piss out of Eric that one time, after all.)

Nil twisted the handle of the gift bag in her hands anxiously, and then she did something she'd never done before: she knocked on the bookshop door. 

Which, she realized as soon as she’d done it, was kind of a goofy-ass move to pull on the door of what was, ostensibly, a store that was currently open for business. She could hear muffled voices inside, and while she couldn’t make out any of the actual words being said inside, she was willing to assume the conversation went along the lines of _“what on earth, did someone just knock on the door”_ and _“that’s suspicious, should we answer it” _and maybe _“you answer it, I’m not going over there.”_ It was a few moments before the discussion subsided and the door opened on a wary-looking Aziraphale and Crowley. 

“He-ey,” Nil singsonged with a little wave, and they looked significantly less worried.

“It’s only Nil,” Aziraphale announced with palpable relief, and Nil felt a little guilty, having now recognized that they had every reason to expect it might be someone less friendly knocking on the door. “Are you all right, dear girl? We were rather worried about you.”

“We?” Crowley barked, looking offended. Aziraphale rolled his eyes.

“Yes, my mistake. _ I _ was worried. Crowley was very stoic and unflappable; the circuit he paced through my shop was _ completely _ unrelated.” Crowley threw in a half-hearted groaning grumble noise, but the cat was well out of the bag at this point, and frankly Nil hadn’t even really bought the whole Asking-For-A-Friend implication at the time anyway.

“I felt bad about all that… _ that._” She shifted her weight from one foot to another and back again, and then held the bag aloft. “I got you presents.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” Aziraphale cooed, which Nil suspected was just as much an automatic response as _ “sorry, we’re closed” _ whenever an actual customer wandered in, because it was pretty clear he wasn’t about to turn the offer down.

“Of course I shouldn't have,” Nil replied cheerfully, “that's how a peace offering works. Kinda like a friendship bribe.” Aziraphale pursed his lips a bit, but he ushered her in nonetheless.

“I _ told _ you she was fine, didn’t I?” Crowley said as Aziraphale closed the door behind Nil. “The picture was a dead giveaway.” 

“I still can’t understand how you managed to conclude that she was fine from a low-quality photo of a felt frog with some incomprehensible text written on it, but it does seem you were correct.”

“And she’s brought gifts!” Crowley regarded the bag suspiciously, suddenly. “Wait, now when you say gifts, you don’t mean Hell-style gifts, do you? That’s not a bag of poison ivy and partially-dead cockroaches?”

“No,” Nil bristled, “it’s a bag of innocuous things I hope you’ll like!” She did another restless wiggle, and began pre-justifying her choices. “I was gonna get you booze, but then I figured you probably have a pretty tidy stash going and I don't know your tastes or anything like that and also it's not like any of us are hurting for options in that department, what with the miracles and all.” Water-into-wine was a well-known classic for a reason: It was impressive-looking as it was easy, and a party-starter to boot. “So then I thought, you know, what do I know you like? Besides booze, obviously. But that was a goose egg, 'cause Aziraphale's obviously already got like every book ever made, and Crowley's obviously all set for ostentatious rich-guy shit, so instead I just decided to get you some stuff that I was totally sure you wouldn’t already have.”

“Alright, alright, shut up and give it here,” Crowley said, grabbing the bag and reaching into it. He reached inside and, furrowing his brow, pulled out one of the floppy volumes inside: a copy of _ Curious Creatures: A Coloring Book Adventure_. Then he looked inside and pulled out the rest of them, thumbed quickly through to see that he was, in fact, seeing what he thought he was, and handed them to let Aziraphale take a look. “You got us coloring-in books?”

“Yeah, adult coloring books are, like, a thing now.” When Nil had first heard of _adult coloring books,_ she had something very different in mind to what she'd actually found. She’d been picturing pornographic line drawings or fancily filthy typography, rather than the preponderance of meditative mandalas and inspirational florals that suddenly dominated less discriminating book stores and any place that sold mid-range art supplies. Undaunted, she’d done a little internet searching and found that adult coloring books fitting her original conception of the term did, in fact, also exist, if one cared to look. “I threw in a variety, didn’t want to disappoint.” Which was to say, she’d included both regular fare like_ Color Yourself Calm_ and _100 Magnificent Mandalas_, but also options like _Go Fuck Yourself, I’m Coloring _and PornHub’s_ Adult Adult Coloring Book._

She could tell by Aziraphale’s little gasp of _ “oh my” _ as he looked through them that she had, at least, nailed the bit about not getting them things they already had. Sure, she would have preferred “delighted” to “baffled,” but she would take anything more positive than “outright unhappy.”

“Well,” Aziraphale said with an uncomfortable smile as he examined the back cover to _ The Kama Sutra Coloring Book_, “it’s the thought that counts.”

“Dunno _ what _ you were thinking,” Crowley added, “But you were definitely thinking something.”

“There’s more,” Nil piped up. “One more thing for each of you, that I didn’t think you already had.” Crowley dove back into the bag, tossing aside several artfully-scrunched sheets of tissue paper, and pulled out a glasses case. Holding it out so that he and Aziraphale could both see the contents, he flipped it open. Inside, they found a pair of sunglasses with heart-shaped lenses in a soft pink-to-blue gradient that would not have looked out of place on Elton John.

"Well,” Crowley said, in what was clearly a terrible attempt at sounding diplomatic, as he looked at them, “you're right, I definitely haven’t got — ”

“What, no, dumbshit, those aren't for you,” Nil said, like she was talking to a particularly inattentive child. “You have your own. Those are for Aziraphale. _ Duh_.”

“Oh!” Aziraphale lit up like a Christmas tree. Gamely, he took them from the case and put them on, and, just as Nil had predicted, looked borderline disgustingly adorable. “How do I look?” Crowley started what was clearly about to be some kind of cutting, sarcastic remark, but failed to follow through at the last second.

“Actually? You kind of make them work.” Aziraphale beamed, and Nil couldn’t help feeling maybe a little more smug than was called for.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale smiled, pushing the shades up onto the crown of his head, and Nil could have sworn she very nearly melted for a second before looking back up at them.

“The _ other _ thing is for you," she told Crowley, and right on cue, he pulled the last item from the bag: one of those gaudy plastic solar-powered dancing flowers. Crowley regarded it with one raised eyebrow, which could have meant anything. “It's for your dashboard,” Nil clarified. “You don’t have anything cheap and tacky, as far as I know.” She wriggled in place again, but now it was half-nervous and half-arrogant, bolstered by Aziraphale’s reaction to the sunglasses. “Do you like it?”

“‘S alright,” he said, not looking at her. And without any other clues, she might not have known how to feel about that, but then she noticed the indulgent and fond _ “oh, you” _ smile Aziraphale was pointing at him. As if he could read her mind, Aziraphale glanced back at her and raised his eyebrows significantly. So Nil grinned, satisfied with her performance at her very first friendly gift-offering. Crowley stashed the thing in some impossible pocket in the lining of his jacket, and looked at her again. “So what’re you trying to butter us up for, then?” Nil mimed being struck in the chest with an arrow.

“Oof, ouch, you injure me,” she said, clutching at her pretend wound. “Can’t I just be apologizing via material objects?”

“Seems unlikely,” Crowley said bluntly, but not unkindly. Nil stuck out her tongue, but couldn’t really protest.

“Alright fine. I do have kind of a proposal,” she admitted. “But I think you’ll like it more than my last one. See, you know what I realized, about attempting to join a team called Team Kiss-Our-Asses?”

“Oh, are we sticking with that, then? Unfortunate,” Aziraphale frowned and made for the sofa. 

“It’s that, if you tell me I _ can’t _ join Team Kiss-Our-Asses, I can always just kind of… tell you to kiss my ass? And then, oop! Look at that! I’m on the team now!”

“What does _ that _mean?”

“What I’m saying is, I’m on your side now, whether you like it or not!” And, just to sell it, she smiled brightly and threw her hands out to her sides. Remembering herself, she quickly dimmed it down, and started qualifying. “But you don’t… have to do anything about it, if you don’t wanna. I’m… I’m sorry I asked you to do anything about it in the first place. It was selfish of me.”

“At the risk of sounding like a bastard,” Crowley said, joining Aziraphale on the sofa in an aggressive lounge, “y’split most of your time between Hell and America. I don’t think either of us were expecting you to be anything_ but _selfish.” Aziraphale’s mouth flopped open, as if he were going to protest, but he closed it quickly again.

“Still. My bullshit’s not your responsibility, no matter how big a splash you made on the way out. Or how many Archangels you made help clean it up.” She took a moment to let them look pleased with themselves at the memory, and she couldn’t help grinning too, like it was somehow just as much her victory. “You guys have been through enough.”

“That’s kind of you, Nil,” Aziraphale said, and immediately added, “You did say that you didn’t mind my saying that, yes?”

“You never said you’d say it in front of _ Crowley_,” Nil winced with a smile. “Now he knows I’m into it, like some kind of _ degenerate,_ ugh.”

“Disgusting,” Crowley smirked at her, like he wasn’t visibly about two feet and one stiff drink from resting his head in Aziraphale’s lap himself.

“_Any_way,” Nil continued, “I got over-excited. I _ should _ have learned my lesson a long time ago that mythologizing heroes and great leaders doesn't lead anywhere good, and anyway you guys clearly aren't interested in the role.” 

“Quite right,” Aziraphale said, looking maybe a little ashamed about it, and Nil felt a pang of guilt again. He clearly barely even wanted to be running this bookshop as an actual business, let alone _ Les Mis_-ing it up with the downtrodden and overworked of Above and Below. What had she been thinking, the last time she was in here?

“But,” she continued, about to explicate for all three of them _ exactly _ what she had been thinking the last time she was in here, “_but. _ Here’s the thing. There is no freaking way that among ten million demons, the number of dissatisfied jaded assholes maxed out at _ two _.” Crowley had the nerve to pull a surprised face, like the thought had never occurred to him. “And honestly, I bet there’s a few other angels who aren’t super stoked about how things have been going Upstairs.” At least Aziraphale’s politely-thoughtful surprise made sense; she knew Heaven was big on the Everything-Is-Fine propaganda. “Others are going to be looking at you guys as an inspiration, and they might not be as chill about it as me.”

“The concern is appreciated, but you shouldn’t worry yourself,” Aziraphale said. “We can take care of ourselves perfectly well.”

“We did manage to make it this long without your help, you know,” Crowley said, and she was pretty sure that was friendly teasing, which was nice and all, but she wasn’t finished.

“Actually, I was thinking, if, uh,” she said, suddenly feeling shy and making fidgety little toe-kicks at the edge of the carpet, “if any of them come to you, maybe you could put them in touch with me, instead. And I'll look for anyone potentially sympathetic to the cause around Head Office, see if I can’t tip the scales. So maybe we could form kind of a… network.” 

“Wait, wait, put them _ in touch _ with you?” Crowley gaped, just a little bit, before segueing neatly into an Olympic-class sneer. “What, d’you mean, just… give them your mobile number? Tell them to at you on Twitter? Don’t be stupid. You’ll get _ caught._” 

“Perhaps you could use some sort of…” Aziraphale’s face brightened, “some sort of secret phone line that can’t be traced back to you?”

“Phone _ lines _ are over, angel,” Crowley said, a grin starting to creep across his face too. “Now you get a whole _ phone _ you can throw away for shady business. They call them burner phones.” Of course. _ Of course _ they were both suddenly interested when it started sounding like some pulp-fiction spy fantasy. Nil rolled her eyes.

“Okay well first of all, in Hell, all phones are burner phones, so jot that down,” she said, waving a dismissive hand. “But honestly? Given that we’re dealing with an organization that’s by-and-large baffled by any technology more advanced than a Pear of Anguish, and that just totally bought it when you claimed, with apparently no evidence, to have _ invented World War II, _ I’m not really that worried they’ll be poring over my phone records.”

“Still, you shouldn’t —”

“_Besides which_,” she went on, cutting off whatever don’t-bother nonsense Crowley was winding up, “I’m good at covering my tracks, and even better at not _ leaving _ any tracks to begin with.” 

“Are you sure about this?” Aziraphale frowned at her. “It does sound dangerous.” His hands were doing that fussy-fidget-wringing thing again. And that was when she realized what this all was. They were trying, in their respective ways, to talk her out of doing something that might get her hurt. Because they were actually worried about her. Because they _ cared about her. _

“I’m positive,” she smiled, proudly squaring her shoulders, more confident about it than ever. “I’m the only one suited for this job. It’s gotta be me. I’m below suspicion.”

“Don’t you mean _ above _ suspicion?”

“No.” _ Above _ could still be seen. Nil worked _ below_, tunneling underneath what everyone around her thought was the bottom layer. Beneath anyone’s notice.

“Still don’t understand why you’re so determined to rock the boat like this,” Crowley said. “You’ve got that whole practically-invisible thing going for you, why stick your neck out?” Nil thought about how best to explain it, and settled for answering by asking a question she was pretty sure nobody had bothered to ask them yet.

“Why did you stop Armageddon?” Immediately, they both started talking over each other in attempts to justify the most obvious thing on the planet. 

“Not really cut out for battle —”

“It wouldn’t have been right, to leave the humans to —”

Nil put her head in her hands. Sometimes it was like they shared a single brain between the two of them, and they were each assuming the other had it at the moment, when in fact it was actually sitting unclaimed in the coat check room of some restaurant they’d been to recently.

“ — absolutely cannot stand _ The Sound of Music _ —”

“ — and Crowley made a very good point about whales, though I can’t quite recall now what it was —”

“No, goofuses, I mean, why did _ you _ stop Armageddon? You _ specifically?” _ They looked up at her, somewhat surprised, like they were just remembering she was in the room. “Why did it have to be you two?”

“Nobody else was going to,” Aziraphale said, after a moment’s thought.

“And believe me,” Crowley added, “Aziraphale tried to find someone else.” Aziraphale and Crowley exchanged meaningful looks about that statement, but Nil chose to sidestep that particular potential drama minefield this time.

“Exactly,” she said, crossing her arms. “Somebody’s gotta do it, it might as well be me. Also, while I’m at it, I'm gonna keep my ear to the ground Downstairs. I'm good at that, y’know, and if I hear anything about any big moves, or about… _ Us versus Them _, I'll let you know, first thing. Be your man on the inside. Woman-shaped-demon on the inside, whatever.” 

“You really are suicidal, aren’t you?” Crowley said, very casually. “Offering to pass sensitive information to traitors like us.”

“We wouldn’t ask you to put yourself at risk,” Aziraphale said. 

“You kiddin’ me?” Nil half-shrugged and waved a dismissing hand. “After what you guys did for me, it’s the least I could do.”

They looked at her like she’d sprouted another head without any particularly pressing reason, which is to say, mildly perplexed, but curious.

“You rekindled my whole rebellious spirit and shit!” She threw her arms out wide and smiled. “I was so jaded and bitter! I figured, I couldn’t trust anyone else to fix things, and I couldn’t fix things all by myself, so I just… stewed. But you guys reminded me that there’s other options! Shitty leaders aside, I still haven't given up on collectivism. On — on the idea that if enough individuals stand together, they can do the impossible. And maybe we don’t have enough yet, but that could change. Probably will change. Just gotta wait for it.”

“I feel as though I _ ought _ to feel worse about inspiring you to redouble your efforts against the institution of Heaven,” Aziraphale said, smiling weakly. “But I suppose I don’t really have a leg to stand on, there, do I?”

“You haven’t really had a leg to stand on there for ages, angel,” Crowley grinned. “Just been sort of… vaguely hovering, really.”

“But, hey,” Nil said, “welcome to the Rebellion proper! And anyway, you shouldn’t feel bad. I’m trying to dismantle the institution of Hell just as much. Just smashing the whole framework, really. You know how it goes,” she smirked, and put on her best Johnny Rotten voice (which was terrible) and quoted, “_I am an anti-Christ, I am an anar-chiste_, that whole thing?”

“I believe it’s pronounced _anarchist_, dear.”

“No, it’s — Warlock H. Dowling, dude, you’ve lived in London since before central plumbing, _ how _ do you not at least _ kind of _ know the Sex Pistols.”

“Is_ that _ the sort of thing being sold next door nowadays?” He sounded very unimpressed by whatever he was imagining. “I do miss the days when Intimate Books just sold erotica, rather than all the… _ paraphernalia_.” Nil opened her mouth to explain, but Crowley held up a hand to shut her down.

“Don’t, it’s a lost battle.” Nil decided to take Crowley’s very-exhausted-sounding word for it, nodded, and moved on.

“Anyway, the other big news that I wanted to tell you is that I’m going back to America.”

“America?” Crowley repeated. “What, you don’t want to stick around and watch this Brexit thing get even worse?”

“Oh, please,” Nil said, rolling her eyes, “like the States are hurting for idiotic, slow-motion political clusterfucks.” Crowley nodded in silent concession, and so did Aziraphale, because some things never changed, no matter how out-of-touch someone was. “No, I figure even being as ignorable as I am, if I’m hanging out with you guys all the time, someone’s gonna catch on to something. Eventually, Dagon might stop being content to just sit around with her thumb up her ass and instruct Earth Surveillance to do the same! And I’m not gonna trust that Heaven’s equivalent’s as big an incompetent ass-kisser as Dagon, especially after they finally caught you two out.”

She paused to clear her throat, before switching conversational lanes a little bit. “And also,” she said, knitting her eyebrows together, because she still couldn’t quite puzzle this one out, “I dunno how or why, but hanging around you two has royally screwed my Spotify algorithm? For some reason my Weekly Discover _ and _ all my Daily Mixes are nothing but Queen and a couple of Freddie solos now? And like, nothin’ against Queen, but sometimes a demonic hellbitch just wants to listen to some Taylor Swift, you know?” The resounding silence from Aziraphale and Crowley which followed was palpable.

“I’m sorry, my dear,” Aziraphale said after a beat, “You lost me somewhere around the spotty thing.” Nil just nodded.

“Yeah, I kinda figured it was Crowley’s fault.” 

“That’s not a charitable assumption,” Crowley said, but noticeably did not deny it, or look directly at her as he said so. And he’d given her a hard time about the Fleetwood Mac.

“I figure I’ll head back down to the office tomorrow and put in for a transfer,” she said. “Gotta say, my first instinct was to just dip and text you about all this after the fact, but I figured I should say goodbye in person. In the interest of not being a _ complete _ dickwad.”

“So soon, really?” Aziraphale looked up at her with those anime-protagonist eyes, and she remembered _ why _ her first instinct had been to ghost: the prospect of removing herself from the company of people she actually liked sucked, but looking them in the eyes as she did so was just terrible. “You must let us say goodbye properly,” he insisted. “We’ll take you to dinner tonight!”

“Oh, _we?_ _W_e will? In _our_ car?” Crowley faked a look of intense thought that was totally ruined by the little grin he was poorly suppressing. “Awfully quick decision _we_ came to, there. On our parts.”

Aziraphale just gave Crowley one of those looks that, even secondhand, gave Nil the beginnings of a toothache. A couple of eyelash flutters, and Crowley sighed melodramatically like he was just told he’d need his teeth pulled (which he might have to, after that). _ Baphomet’s tits, _ Nil couldn’t believe she’d ever thought this could be based on anything other than vomit-inducing levels of affection. 

“_Fine, _ we’ll take you to dinner.” Nil was totally unable to stifle a snorting giggle, or so she would have said if asked. Really, she hadn’t tried very hard.

So she was, once again, led into the backseat of Crowley’s antique car, which by all means should have looked goofy and quaint in a modern setting, and yet (probably by an infernal miracle or several), it did not. It was instead imposing and stately, and gave the impression that maybe _ you _ were the dumb asshole for not expecting to see a car that pre-dated television driving around modern London.

And now, as Crowley wordlessly reached into that interior jacket pocket and plunked the thing down, the car’s dashboard became home to a stylized plastic daisy that rhythmically bounced and swayed like a metronome. Nil felt something in her throat, like a prematurely-swallowed Jolly Rancher, and she wasn’t sure why, but she was able to choke it down quickly enough.

“As we’re celebrating,” Aziraphale said, rummaging through the glove compartment like it was, in fact, _ their _ car, “perhaps we should have a bit of music?” He held up a handful of CD jewel cases, which seemed a little odd until Nil realized that Crowley probably didn’t have the patience to explain non-physical music storage to Aziraphale.

“No, come on, you know the music thing never works like you want it to,” Crowley protested, but Nil scooted forward on the back’s bench seating to stick her head between the two of them and see better as Aziraphale shuffled through the cases.

“Oh dunk, I recognize that banana!” Not that this was much of an accomplishment; the cover of _ The Velvet Underground & Nico _ was pretty iconic. “That album fucks, let's listen to that!”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale beamed, “she's a fan of your Velvet Underground!”

“Wait, no, that one's been in the glove box a while, maybe — ”

“Nonsense, no point in holding off on my account,” Aziraphale said, cheerfully cracking open the case and pushing the disc into the slot, “I’m outnumbered!”

“Hell yeah, this album owns,” Nil grinned, having quickly developed a morbid anticipation about how a fussy-but-well-read angel would handle the experience of hearing “Venus in Furs,” when they got to it. But what started playing was not the tinkly piano, noodly guitar, and lilting Lou Reed lyrics she was expecting. Instead, it was an unmistakable _ stomp-stomp-clap _ rhythm. “This, uh. This isn’t a track from _ The Velvet Underground & Nico._”

“No,” Crowley sighed. “No, it’s not.”

“This is —”

“Yeah, no, it’s —”

“‘We Will Rock You,’” they both said in chorus, right as Freddie Mercury’s shouted vocals kicked in.

_ “Best of Queen,” _ Crowley clarified in a sheepish mumble. Nil rested her forehead against the back of the passenger-side headrest.

“Yo, I gotta get out of this country,” she groaned. “I am really starting to miss female vocalists.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nil says her goodbyes to her new friends.

Nil really hadn’t ever been much for dining out before. Sure, she did get a certain demonic enjoyment out of cramming a Big Mac as sloppily into her face as possible, for the purposes of turning a few stomachs and confirming some Londoners’ assumptions about Americans. And she didn’t _ dislike _ food, on the whole. She had to admire the human dedication to finding a way to eat almost any inedible nonsense they found. Pinchy ocean bugs? Milk so bad it was solid? Plants giving off every possible “do not eat me, it will hurt you” signal short of causing death? All completely unremarkable items in an average human diet, because humans were crazy.

But she’d previously never had much use for the whole ritual of going out to eat. It involved so much sitting patiently and waiting, and then on top of that sometimes the food wasn’t even anything all that special, and then it was generally accepted that she was supposed to pay money for the experience? It just seemed like a waste of time to Nil. She was realizing, now, that she’d been missing a crucial piece of the equation: the social component. With company, she found the waiting around wasn’t tedious at all, no matter how many courses Aziraphale insisted on. Now, they (okay, mostly Aziraphale) had finished an exorbitant dessert course, and she and Crowley were engaged in a semi-heated debate about which of Hell’s interventions had been worse for humanity: creating disco, or killing disco.

“It’s like, what’s good for the spider isn’t what’s good for the fly, you know?” Nil paused to take a sip of what remained of her appletini. “It’s not equal-opportunity. Like, yeah, disco provided for a lot of shithead executives on coke, but the scene itself was, like, a huge boon to the gay and black communities! And like, I’m all for inflicting misery on humans, but isn’t the point that we’re supposed to try and save it for the ones who have it coming and choose it by being assholes?”

Crowley snorted. “When have Head Office ever actually been that picky?”

“Hey, listen, now,” she leaned in conspiratorially. “Personal standards, man. You and me are beyond that spaghetti-at-the-wall bullshit.”

“All I’m saying,” Crowley said, “is that this all sounds suspiciously like the logic of someone who misses doing Quaaludes on the dance floor.” Nil cackled into her glass.

“Okay, true, I _ do _ miss doing ludes on the dance floor,” she admitted, “but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong! Anyway, what I mean is, more focus on the cokehead executives, less on people whose lives already suck ass and they just want to spend three minutes dancing to insipid lyrics to forget about it.”

“That’s a surprisingly altruistic approach to demonic activity,” said Aziraphale, having just finished dabbing his napkin to his mouth.

“I dunno about _ altruistic,_” she replied, before draining the last unnaturally-green remnants from her glass, “it’s just more fun to screw over people who deserve it.”

“Wouldn’t have guessed you were one for disco, anyway,” Crowley said, giving her an appraising look, like he might find something more than Nil’s purposeful unremarkability this time. “More of a punk rock sort of vibe.”

“Well as far as attitude, yeah,” she answered, “fuck authority, smash the state, kick and scream the entire time. But I split my time pretty evenly between CBGB’s and Studio 54, when they were hopping.” Of course, nowadays, what had been Studio 54 was a Broadway theater that had recently wrapped a revival of _ Kiss Me, Kate!_, and what had been CBGB was now a designer clothing store that sold t-shirts for upwards of seventy dollars. Nil was pretty sure there was some kind of poignant statement about something in that, but she didn’t really know what it was or care to try and figure it out. “Wherever there is loud music playing and very poor life choices being made,” she announced archly, “there shall you find me, lurking in the shadows to corrupt human souls! … And sometimes get a little high.” Laughing, she put her empty glass down on the table, and noticed the state of Aziraphale’s dessert plate: Meticulously cleaned of every drop of drizzled sweet sauce, every dusting of confectioners’ sugar, and any crumb detectable by the human eye. It could damn near be reused without being washed.

As slow an eater as he was, he’d finished dessert. The clock was ticking.

“I’m afraid we’ve run out of courses,” Aziraphale said, as if he’d read her mind (or at least noticed her looking at his empty dish). Crowley did a big, performative turn to stare at him.

“Who are you and what have you done with Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale tutted. “While ordinarily you know I’d be an advocate of second desserts and multiple rounds of post-dinner drinks, I fear in this case the motivations might be a bit… selfish.”

“Unlike those incredibly selfless dessert binges you usually do,” Crowley said, propping his elbow up on the table and resting his chin on his hand. “A real martyr, you are.”

“You know what I mean,” Aziraphale insisted, and then he turned to Nil. “It wouldn’t be fair, to keep you longer than necessary.” Nil took a deep breath and did not say that she wished they _ could _ keep her; that given the freedom she wanted, she’d just keep hanging out like this. 

Instead, what she said, with a sad smile, was, “No more stalling, huh?”

And then, they got the check and made their way outside. 

* * *

“So, uh,” Nil started, as they stood awkwardly gathered outside Crowley's improbable parking spot outside of the restaurant, “I'm not great at this yet, so bear with me, I guess. Might get it all wrong.”

“I'm sure you'll do perfectly fine,” Aziraphale said, and she knew, she just _ knew _ he actually believed it, and _ goddamn_, she was going to miss them.

"You guys have been… really cool to me. And I have absolutely not earned that, so it really means a lot, that you were anyway. And that's not, like, false modesty or whatever, I've worked really hard not to be the sort of person who deserves a lot of kindness.” Nil paused to consider the executive she'd pickpocketed to buy the presents she'd given them earlier. He probably didn't deserve much kindness, either, though. “I'll stay in touch,” she said, brightening. “I've got Crowley's number and the number for the landline in the bookshop, so… okay, no, I'm gonna be honest, if I have anything to say to you, Aziraphale, I'll probably just text it and tell Crowley to show you. Phone conversations are a friggin' nightmare.”

“This is what I keep saying, angel,” Crowley interjected.

“It wouldn’t do me any good to get my own, just to talk to Nil,” Aziraphale protested. “Everything would need to go through you for translation anyway. I can’t make heads or tails of her… _ memes._” Nil covered her mouth to try and hold in her involuntary laughter at the withering way Aziraphale said the word. It did not work.

“And I'll tell you anything I hear that I think you ought to know, work-wise,” she continued, once she recovered. “And any especially juicy infernal gossip.”

“That’ll put me more in the loop than I’ve been in centuries,” Crowley said, looking faintly amused by the idea.

“Crowley,” Nil said, turning to look only at him, “you suck out loud as a tutor.”

“You suck out loud as a student,” Crowley countered.

“Granted,” she smirked. “But you did manage to get something across to me.”

“That you can lie on your reports as long as you’ve got plausible deniability?”

“I — well, yeah, but — I had a thing! Let me do my thing!”

Crowley gestured expansively, as if to say,_ “do your thing,” _ even as he cocked a skeptical eyebrow.

“Okay, you know how you set up the whole M25 thing, and then proceeded to spend the ensuing decades complaining every time you entered the Head Office about how miserable you were as a result of getting stuck in the infernal traffic on the M25?”

“Real heartfelt goodbye, this is shaping up to be,” Crowley grumbled, but he grinned as he did so.

“No, look, what I mean is, that I’ve realized the same thing can happen to Hell as a whole… institution. Just because Hell invented deception and secrecy doesn’t mean they can’t be brought down by them as much as anyone else!” She straightened out her spine, trying to hold together under the weight of all this _ sincerity. _ “You showed me that they put the tools of their own destruction into my hands and set me loose with ‘em, I just wasn’t looking at ‘em correctly. But now I am. And they won’t even notice I’m chipping away at the foundations under my aggressively-middling job performance!”

Even with the sunglasses, it was readily evident that he was trying his best to look anywhere but Nil's face.

“I didn't mean to do any of that, so,” he said, “y'know, if everything goes all pear-shaped, don't go blaming me.”

“I'm definitely gonna,” she said with a nod. Crowley smiled, like for-real smiled, and so did Nil, before she turned her attention elsewhere.

“And Aziraphale! You showed me something really important too!”

“Oh, did I really?” Aziraphale nearly glowed about it. 

“I was so blinded by my own situation and suffering that I lost sight of what was really important,” and now it was Nil’s turn to beam like a sun-lamp: “Fuck Heaven!” 

“Oh,” he said, glow dimming a little.

“I have so much capacity for spite, and I’ve been wasting my potential by being focused on Hell and my place in it. I gotta keep in mind why I broke out of that shit-ass institution in the first place, and you reminded me! They’re a bunch of hypocrites with completely unearned superiority complexes, and _ fuck _ ‘em!”

“Glad to have been of assistance,” he said weakly. Nil wondered if maybe he wasn’t entirely over the whole breakup thing. So she decided to do her best to quash any doubts in his mind.

“Seriously. You’re the first angel I’ve ever met who wasn’t a total chode waste of time, and they had you since the beginning, and they had _ no _ appreciation for that, and it’s their huge loss getting rid of you, and they don’t even realize it. To me, even leaving aside all the other stuff, that right there would be worth apostasizing for.” Was _ apostasizing _ a real word? Eh, no matter, he’d know what she meant. “You’re the only angel I’ve ever known who was worth a damn and not worth damning.”

“_Nil,_” Aziraphale said, eyes shining and million-megawatt smile coming back in full force, “that’s lovely, thank you.” There was that Jolly Rancher throat-feeling again, what the Hell? She swallowed and steeled herself before continuing.

“Can I ask you for a favor, actually, before I go?”

“Well, that depends what it is,” he said cautiously, “but I’ll do my best.”

“So, um, here’s the thing… My abilities don’t really suit themselves to stuff like making physical contact, and that’s cool, I don’t usually mind and all, but I’ve always kind of wanted to try doing a hug? And I’m like, leaving, so I figured that’d be a pretty good excuse to try it out? And you look like you’d be _ stupid _ good at it.” 

“You don’t mean — this would be your _ first? _ Oh, that’s rather a great deal of pressure. But of course I’m honored that you would ask me! I shall endeavor to — well, not that it’s a hardship, of course, but —” Son of a bitch bastard _ damn it, _ she could _ feel _ her cheeks burn pink.

“Don’t make a big deal out of it, or whatever,” she said through clenched teeth. “Just, either do it or don’t.”

“Oh, dear thing, of course, come here.” He held out his arms, and here went nothing, Nil supposed, and pressed her squishy humanoid torso against Aziraphale’s. And all at once, she felt very small as he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed, firmly but gently.

“Oh, that_ is _ nice,” she mumbled. “_Dude. _ I see why humans are so nuts for this. It’s like… okay so, you know the vast, cavernous hole in my soul, where the light of God’s love used to be before I Fell? This is like someone went in there wearing those stupid shoes that light up when you walk around in ‘em.” Which Aziraphale had nothing to say to, probably because it was more than a little insane, but Nil did not care how stupid she sounded. Nil had expected hugging to be enjoyable, based on what she’d heard, but she hadn’t realized it would feel so warm, so soft, so _ safe. _ She could live here, which _ should _ have been embarrassing, but it was so nice that it _ wasn't. _ Not even annoyed by the bow tie poking into her face, she felt his hand on her back, patting softly once, twice, three times, and then both of them sliding back around front to rest on her shoulders. She could feel it rumbling through his chest when Aziraphale cleared his throat.

“Alright, let go, you're killing him,” Crowley said behind her. Nil instantly released her hold and backed off.

“Because of the demon thing?” For an instant, she started to fret that in her desperation for kindness, she'd been choking out Aziraphale's angelic essence by wrapping her grubby little demonic substance around it. But then Crowley quickly put that to rest.

“No, idiot, because he's English and you're being a handsy weirdo.” Nil glanced at Crowley and then back at Aziraphale, who was wearing an apologetic expression that spoke volumes about how he, Aziraphale, would not have put it that way, but that yes, Crowley was right. “He gave you three back pats and everything, anything more than that is practically pornographic.”

“Oh! Haha,” she blurted, looking back and forth between them. “My bad. Got carried away.”

“You did very well, for a beginner,” Aziraphale insisted. “But perhaps in private, next time.” A laugh bubbled out of her mouth before she could even think about stopping it. Partially, it was because of course someone like Aziraphale would class a few seconds of the most chaste platonic physical affection as almost obscenely intimate, and partially out of irrepressible joy at the promise that there would be a _ next time_.

“Alright, let's get it over with,” Crowley sighed, holding his arms out expectantly.

“Crowley,” Nil frowned, “you’re like ninety percent bones and possibly cold-blooded to boot, and if I wanted that experience there’s plenty of emaciated corpses I could be hugging up on in Hell.”

“Oh. Good. Didn’t want a hug anyway,” Crowley sniffed, turning his face away from her. Something didn’t line up. She narrowed her eyes.

“Are you lying?” She looked to Aziraphale. “Is he lying? Does he want a hug?”

“I suspect he might,” Aziraphale said, the very definition of _ sotto voce. _

“Haaa, that’s embarrassing,” and she pointed mockingly at Crowley for good measure. “Can’t believe what a shitty liar you are, you’re a _ demon_.” Before he could make any claims to the contrary (about either the lying or the hug), Nil flung herself at him, squeezing and pinning his arms to his sides. “Oh, this isn’t as unpleasant as I thought, actually. This jacket’s nice material.” She planted her face onto his lapel, for emphasis. He bent one of his trapped arms up at the elbow, reaching up enough to just barely reciprocate the hug.

“You’re intolerable, you know that?” And despite herself, Nil welled up with the emotion she was only just beginning to recognize as _ fondness_, and smiled.

“Psh, you think I’m intolerable now, wait’ll you see how often I text you,” she assured him. 

* * *

Crowley had offered her a ride, if she wanted one. But she didn’t accept. Mostly, she didn’t want to make him and Aziraphale hover into the vicinity of their old offices on her account, not if they didn’t have to. And she thought a quiet walk would do her some good. Give her some time to be alone with her thoughts for a little while, rather than go straight from Emotional Social Event to Abysmal Torturous Job. She wandered around London in the dark for a few hours, before she made her way to the office. It didn’t matter when she got there, after all. Hell was always open for business.

Nil had to admit, as she sunk through the liquid floor of the lobby into the office below, that she was kind of starting to feel something adjacent to homesickness. The London entrance was impressive and all, but it lacked some of the _ je ne sais quois _ of the DMVs across the United States she usually used. The escalators were a marvel of metaphysical engineering, sure, but a bunch of frustrated humans waiting in line for the opportunity to _ wait in a different line _ always hit Nil like a big mug of fresh morning coffee. But maybe the people of England were too used to waiting in lines for that to really faze them anymore. Not like the deranged would-be motorists of New Jersey, she recalled with a wistful grin.

The thing about the offices of Hell, or, well, one of the things, one of the many _ really annoying goddamn things_, was that the layout was not tied down by things like logic or geometry or reality. Mostly it seemed to be motivated by spite and frustration, at least when accommodating nobodies like Nil. So it was not a straightforward trip, to get started on the process of transferring back to the States. The door she was looking for seemed especially determined to elude her today. But, luckily, sometimes there were ways around that sort of problem.

She spotted one of the potential shortcuts in a dank hallway (they were all dank), instantly identifiable by his distinctive bunny-ear hair-horns.

“Oh, hey, Eric,” she called out, and he turned to face her. “Any of your uh, instances with anybody in filing?”

“Oh yeah, good timing. Dagon’s got two right now. Oops, nope, just the one, now.” Eric the Legion was, as his title suggested, a hivemind of many individuals. He propagated through mitosis or something like that, so there was a nearly-inexhaustible well of him, which led many demons to take out their frustrations on whichever Eric was closest. Violently.

“Sweet. Could you let her know that I’m officially demanding a reassignment?” One of the very, _ very _ few benefits to working in Hell was that making absurd demands and imposing your will was seen as not just acceptable behavior, but the kind of thing worth encouraging. Only weaklings made requests, and anyway demands required a lot less paperwork. “I’m thinking New York again. Those bastards have had it too good for too long.” How long had it been since the last MTA fare hike? Not long enough to justify another one, Nil was pretty sure, which made it the perfect time to inspire one.

“Has… _ you-know-who _ soured you on London, then?” Eric was a notorious gossip, as Nil suspected many hiveminds were. And on the off-chance that he remembered Nil’s name (incredibly unlikely), it wouldn’t do if he started spreading rumors that she was scared off by Crowley. But that was easy enough to deflect.

“Satan’s _ balls, _ dude, we finally get to be free of him constantly fuckin’ gassing up his own image, and everybody’s just gonna do it _ for _ him now? No, not everything’s about him, no matter what he thinks.” She shook her head and let herself look as disgusted and disdainful as she could manage. “I just have ideas for America, that’s all. Tell Dagon.”

“Right,” Eric said. “And, uh… what was your name again?” She knew it.

“Nil,” Nil said.

“Alright, taken care of. Anything else you want me to— oh, no, never mind. She’s torn out my throat.” Nil rolled her eyes.

“That’s middle-management types for you.” Eric nodded somberly as Nil shook her head again. “Can’t believe the ridiculous bullshit we put up with in this job sometimes.” She let that hang in the fetid air for a moment, before scowling again and telling Eric, “Alright, get lost.”

Nil knew that it would be a tremendously stupid idea to keep a paper trail, to write any of this plan down anywhere, so she didn’t. But she did, very vividly, picture herself pulling out that stolen Moleskine notebook and writing the name _ “Eric the Legion” _ under the heading of _ “potential recruits,” _and smiled to herself.


End file.
